Focus on nanophotonics and metamaterials

06 Sep 2007

Journal of Optics A: Pure and Applied Optics presents a special issue dedicated to research papers presented at the NANOMETA-2007 conference, a new European Topical Meeting which took place January 2007, in Seefeld, Austria.

Recent advances in nanofabrication now allow sub-wavelength photonic structures to be manufactured which are of similar complexity to those used in the microwave community for many decades. The idea of the NANOMETA meeting was to bring together the extensive experience of microwave electrical engineers in structured materials and the emerging community of photonics researchers interested in the physics of light coupled to nanostructures.

The overlap between these two groups of scientists became apparent a few years ago with the possibility to revolutionize electrodynamics by developing media that displayed negative refraction, for which the term “metamaterials” was coined. Today this term covers materials with all sorts of unusual electromagnetic functionalities that may be achieved by sub-wavelength structuring.

The special issue covers the diverse topics discussed at the NANOMETA meeting, and includes negative index materials, 2D and 3D photonic bandgap structures, nanolensing and nanoharvesting of light, nanotransmission lines and nano-antennas, single nanoparticle photonics, and quantum effects in nanophotonics (J. Opt. A 9 9.)

The collection of papers shows how much has already been achieved by these two communities, and illustrates the fascinating possible future directions and applications of nanophotonics and metamaterials.