Monday, February 16th, 3–4 PM in Schiciano Side A
Dr. Israel De Leon
University of Ottawa
Title: “Plasmonic Metamaterials and Nanomaterials for Light Control at the Nanoscale”
Abstract: Plasmonic nanostructures and metamaterials offer the possibility to control and localize light over nanoscopic dimensions. A number of exciting and technologically important applications of such structures have emerged in the past years, including nanoscopic lasers and optical amplifiers, nanoscopic planar photonic systems, and artificial materials with exotic optical properties. Furthermore, the large optical field enhancement associated with plasmonic excitations could enable efficient nonlinear functionality in these optical systems. In this talk, I will discuss our research in some of these directions. In the first part of the talk, I will present our recent work on two-dimensional plasmonic metamaterials for light manipulation, and discuss the potential of this technology for devising flat optical components with polarization-tailored functionality. In the second part, I will present our recent results on the nonlinear optical response of plasmonic nano-films, and of nano-films composed of materials with vanishing electric permittivity. These results indicate that the latter type of materials hold promise for developing metamaterial-based optical devices with efficient nonlinear functionality.
Bio: Israel De Leon received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from theUniversity of Ottawa in 2011 for his theoretical and experimental work inactive surface plasmon photonics. His Ph.D. dissertation was recognized withvarious academic awards, including the prestigious Governor General’s GoldMedal for the highest academic standing at the graduate level. Following this,he was a CERC postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Quantum NonlinearOptics at the University of Ottawa under the supervision of Prof. Robert W.Boyd. Since 2014 he has been working as a research associate in the same group. Dr. De Leon has a broad research interest in the fields of nano-optics and optical metamaterials aiming at multidisciplinary applications. Some of the topics that he investigates include: the optical interactions between moleculesand nanoscopic metallic structures, chiral phenomena in metamaterials, and nonlinear nano-optics in plasmonic materials and in materials with vanishing electric permittivity.