Wealth of fascinating phenomena provided by artificial photonic structures sparks extensive research efforts in the studies of metamaterials, a special and perspective class of them being the hyperbolic metamaterials (HMMs). Strong HMMs optical anisotropy attained by the combination of metal and dielectric constituents underpins unusual hyperbolic dispersion of light in these artificial media, which marvels plethora of far-reaching applications in photonics. However the dynamics of ultrashort optical pulses in HMMs remains almost unexplored. In this work we experimentally investigate the interaction of femtosecond laser pulses with metal-nanorod based HMMs exhibiting the epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) spectral point, when extraordinary dielectric permittivity goes to zero yielding transition between topologically distinct elliptic and hyperbolic light HMM dispersion. We demonstrate a pronounced superluminal and slow propagation of laser pulses in the HMM, with the transition between these regimes and resonant character of these phenomena in the spectral vicinity of the ENZ point. We put forward a theoretical model of the superluminality and slow light, which leverages unusual case of laser pulse with spectral components in elliptic and hyperbolic dispersion at once. We believe our findings bring to life superior applications for future linear and nonlinear ultrafast photonics of HMMs harnessing of revealed exotic dynamics of optical field in these media.
Structuring of a medium on the wavelength and subwavelength scales significantly enriches its interaction with light leading to new optical effects. As a result, it fuels the interest in planar artificial structures like photonic crystals, metasurfaces and plasmonic crystals, which have found tremendous success in light manipulation and applications in sensing, routing, light localization, enhancement of the nonlinear effects. The deep insight into optical phenomena in artificial structures requires necessarily numerical simulations. For periodic structures such as photonic crystals and diffraction gratings, numerical methods like finite-difference time-domain method (FDTD) and rigorous coupled-wave analysis (RCWA) are widely used. These methods have definite drawbacks, as the FDTD requires large computer memory to store the field values in the nodes of a 3D mesh, and high computational effort for the time simulation; the RCWA demands extra labor for the accurate treatment of a grating made of metal or anisotropic materials. Because the optical effects in highly anisotropic metal-based artificial structures like hypercrystals are of practical interest, we have proposed hybrid finite-difference frequency-domain (FDFD) approach for the calculation of light diffraction in such periodic structures. The improvement is achieved by handling the direct values instead of Fourier series, which is the core of the RCWA. Using this approach, we predict the excitation of the Dyakonov plasmons in hypercrystal formed by trenches in hyperbolic metamaterials.
Organic microstructures attract much attention due to their unique properties originating from the design of their shape and optical parameters. In this work we discuss the linear, second- and third-order nonlinear optical effects in arrays and in individual organic microstructures composed by self-assembling technique and formed randomly on top of a solid substrate. The structures under study consist of micro-spheres, -hemispheres or -frustums made of red laser dye and reveal an intense fluorescence (FL) in the visible spectral range. Importantly, that due to a high value of the refractive index and confined geometry, such micro-structures support the excitation of whispering gallery modes (WGM), which brings about strong and spectrally-selected light localization. We show that an amplification of the nonlinear optical effects is observed for these structures as compared to a homogeneous dye film of similar composition. The obtained data are in agreement with the results of the FDTD calculations performed for the structures of different dimensions. Perspectives of application of such type of organic nonlinear microresonators in optical devices are discussed.
The Borrmann effect is known as an increase of the X-rays transmission of a perfect crystal in the Laue diffraction scheme when the Bragg diffraction condition are satisfied. Following the trend of the transfer of the X-ray phenomena into the optical spectral range, we experimentally observed and studied the optical analogue of the Borrmann effect for the case of one-dimensional photonic crystals (PhC). For the experiments we made the samples of PhCs based on porous fused silica, which reveal periodical modulation of the refractive index and light absorption. We show that in such structures the Borrmann effect reveals itself as increasing transmission when light propagates through a PhC at the Bragg angle of incidence. Pronounced differences of the Borrmann effect are observed for the PhC structures with light losses concentrated in high or low refractive index layers. The spectral features of the effect are analyzed both experimentally and theoretically.
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