Electromagnetic Response Design With Plasmonic Metamaterials

Abstract

Plasmons are quantized quasiparticles of the electron density waves. When coupled with photons, plasmons become another type of quasiparticles called plasmon polaritons. At the surface of a metal, surface plasmons can be formed. They have confined propagation on the surface, analogous to water waves in a pool. Plasmonic metamaterials manipulate the surface plasmon resonances, achieving a variety of unseen optical properties in nature. For the sake of fast emerging of nano fabrication and characterization techniques in recent years, plasmonic metamaterials have been applied in a wide range of fields, such as broadband absorption in solar cells, negative index materials for cloaking, subwavelength imaging, and wave modulations. One unique property of plasmonic metamaterial is offering remarkable flexibility in controlling effective dielectric properties of matter, depending on the composite design. In this thesis, several concepts of EM response manipulation using plasmonic metamaterials are proposed and studied. These studies include: (1) a scheme assuring topologically protected photonic edge states in the visible range utilizing epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) gyroelectric metamaterials; (2) engineering low frequency dielectric function with extremely subwavelength magnetic resonators; and (3) tailoring the electron-phonon interactions (including controlling superconductivity) by introducing plasmonic resonators into the phonon systems. These works may enable a broad range of applications in both photonic and phonon systems.