** includes a 3-4 months internship at Osaka University, Japan **
Metasurfaces are 2D arrangements of nanostructures that resonantly scatter and jointly can act as analogue signal processing components: upon reflection or transmission of light, they can encode a complex optical function, programmed as an optical transfer function or hologram. However, usual metasurfaces are fundamentally limited by being linear and passive, i.e. by providing only loss, and no gain. In this project, we aim to lift this fundamental limitation by realizing metasurfaces in which, both optical loss and gain can be programmed. The idea is to do that with lithographically patterned arrays of GaN quantum wells, which are developed at Osaka University (group of Prof. Fujiwara) for LED display applications. The Master student can visit this group for a 3-4 months internship to develop and fabricate these patterns. Back in Amsterdam, he/she measures these active structures by pump-probe optical spectroscopy at Amolf.
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. F. Koenderink, Prof. Dr. P. Schall
Daily supervisor: Nelson de Gaay Fortman
Fig. 1 Illustration of a field of nanophotonic scatterers. These scatterers will be made active, so that they can be “activated” by optical pumping, and subsequently probed by a probe light beam.