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MNT-301
UNIT-2

Introduction to Photonic bandgap Crystals Materials and Fabrication techniques of Photonic bandgap Crystals: Semiconductors, Amorphous, Polymers, Fabrication of photonic crystal structure (1D, 2D, 3D), Optics in nano sized quantum wells and wires (periodic nanostructures), Negative refractive index Microwave induced transport. Nano-scale photonic devices: couplers, waveguides liquid crystals and their applications at the nanoscale

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Technical road map showing the requirement to reduce the size of photonic devices for shorterdistance optical fiber communication systems.

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Introduction to nanophotonic
Nanophotonics or Nano-optics is the study of the behavior of light on the nanometer scale. It is considered as a branch of optical engineering which deals with optics, or the interaction of light with particles or substances at deeply subwavelength length scales. AIM: The study of nanophotonics involves two broad themes 1) studying the novel properties of light at the nanometer scale 2) enabling highly power efficient devices for engineering applications. Appplications: The study has the potential to revolutionize the telecommunications industry by providing low power, high speed, interference-free devices such as electrooptic and alloptical switches on a chip.

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Explanation: As we know that the wavelength of ultraviolet, visible and near IR light of approximately 300 to 1200 nanometers.

The

interaction of

light

with

these

nanoscale features

leads

to confinement

of

the electromagnetic field to the surface or tip of the nanostructure resulting in a region referred to as the optical near field. This effect is similar to the lightning rod, where the field concentrates at the tip. In this region, the field may need to adjust to the topography of the nanostructure (by the boundary conditions of Maxwells equations). This means that the electromagnetic field will be dependent on the size and shape of the nanostructure that the light is interacting with.

Why Nanophotonic: Technologies in the field of nano-optics include near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM), photoassisted scanning tunnelling microscopy and surface plasmon optics.

Traditional microscopy makes use of diffractive elements to focus light tightly in order to increase resolution. But because of the diffraction limit, propagating light may be focused to a spot with a minimum diameter of roughly half the wavelength of the light.

Thus, even with diffraction-limited confocal microscopy, the maximum resolution obtainable is on the order of a couple of hundred nanometers.

The scientific and industrial communities are becoming more interested in the characterization of materials and phenomena on the scale of a few nanometers, so alternative techniques must be utilized.

Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) makes use of a probe, (usually either a tiny aperture or super-sharp tip), which either locally excites a sample or transmits local information from a sample to be collected and analyzed.

The ability to fabricate devices in nanoscale that has been developed recently provided the catalyst for this area of study.

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Introduction to Nanophotonics
To go beyond the diffraction limit, we need nonpropagating nanometer-sized light to induce primary excitation in a nanometer-sized material (called nanophotonic crystal) in such a manner that the phase of excitation is independent of that of the incident light. One promising technology to decrease the size of light is nanophotonics, which was proposed in 1993. If a nanometer sized particle is illuminated by propagating light, it generates scattered light, which propagates to the far field and exhibits diffraction. However, also generated at the surface of the particle is an optical near-field, which is nonpropagating light whose energy is localized at the particle surface. (also called virtual cloud of photons) Novel or nanometer-sized materials called photonic crystal that may be used for future advanced photonic devices. This also applies to improvements in the resolution of optical fabrication and for increasing the storage density of optical disk memories.

The use of optical near fields has been proposed as a way to transcend the diffraction limit. This proposal holds that an optical near field can be generated on a sub-wavelength-sized aperture by irradiating the propagating light.

the optical near-field energy depends not on the wavelength of the incident light, but on the aperture size.

An optical near field is generated by the electronic dipoles induced in a nanometric particle (i.e., a sub-wavelength-sized zerodimensional topographical material).

optical near fields have been applied to realize diffraction-free, high-resolution optical microscopy.

How to generate Optical near field: an optical near field is generated by the electronic dipoles induced in a nanometric particle (i.e., a sub-wavelength-sized topographical material).

Their alignment of a particle is independent of the phase of the incident light because the particles are much smaller than the wavelength of the incident light. But, it depends on the size, and structure of the particle.

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optical near fields: The use of optical near fields has been proposed as a way to transcend the diffraction limit.

This proposal holds that an optical near field can be generated on a sub-wavelength-sized aperture by irradiating the propagating light.

length of the optical near-field energy depend not on the wavelength of the light, but on the size, conformation, and structure of the particle.

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Principle: dressed photon, not the free photon, that carries the material excitation energy. Therefore, the energy of the dressed photon, hvdp , is larger than that of the free photon, hv , due to contribution of the material excitation energy.
Transfer of energy

Photonic Crystal
This is a study of a photonic crystal waveguide.

Photonic crystal devices are periodic structures of alternating layers of materials with different refractive indices.

Waveguides that are confined inside of a photonic crystal can have very sharp low-loss bends, which may enable an increase in integration density of several orders of magnitude.

The crystal features a grid of GaAs pillars. Depending on the distance between the pillars (If the photonic Crystal in 2D), waves within a certain frequency range will be reflected instead of propagated through the crystal.

This frequency range is called the photonic band gap. If some of the GaAs pillars in the crystal structure are removed, a guide for the frequencies within the band gap is created. Light can then propagate along the outlined guide geometry.

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Photonic band gape

Photonic crystals are periodic optical nanostructures that are designed to affect the motion of photons. A photonic crystal consists of a lattice of dielectric particles with separations on the order of the wavelength of visible light. photonic crystals contain regularly repeating internal regions of high and low dielectric constant. Photons (behaving as waves) propagate through this structure - or not it depending on their wavelength. Wavelengths of light that are allowed to travel are known as modes, and groups of allowed modes form bands. Disallowed bands of wavelengths are called photonic band gaps. Since the basic physical phenomenon is based on diffraction, the periodicity of the photonic crystal structure has to be of the same length-scale as half the wavelength of the EM waves i.e. ~200 nm (blue) to 350 nm (red) for photonic crystals operating in the visible part of the spectrum - the repeating regions of high and low dielectric constants have to be of this dimension. This makes the fabrication of optical photonic crystals complex.

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The reflection of waves of electrons in ordinary metallic crystal lattices. The wavefunction of an electron in a metal can be written in the free-electron approximation as

In the nearly free-electron model of metals the valence or conduction electrons are treated as noninteracting free electrons moving in a periodic potential arising from the positively charged ion cores.

Consider a plot of the energy versus the wavevector for a one dimensional lattice of identical ions.

The energy is proportional to the square of the wavevector, except near the band edge where k=/a

The important result is that there is an energy gap of width Eg meaning that there are certain wavelengths or wavevectors that will not propagate in the lattice.

Consider Bragg reflection Consider a series of parallel planes in a lattice separated by a distance d containing the atoms of the lattice.

The path difference between two waves reflected from adjacent planes is 2d sin, where is the angle of incidence of the wavevector to the planes.

If the path difference 2d sin is a half-wavelength, the reflected waves will destructively interfere, and cannot propagate in the lattice, so there is an energy gap.

This is a result of the lattice periodicity and the wave nature of the electrons.

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In 1987 Yablonovitch and John proposed the idea of building a lattice with separations such that light could undergo Bragg reflections in the lattice.

For visible light this requires a lattice dimension of about 0.5 pm or 500 nm. Such crystals have to be artificially fabricated by methods such as electron-beam lithography or X-ray lithography.

Essentially a photonic crystal is a periodic array of dielectric particles having separations on the order of 500nm

Current research on photonic crystals truly embodies the concepts of nanophotonics, with spatial index modulation (etched holes or solid rods) at the 100 nanometer (nm) scale, that allows compact, highly integrable waveguides, filters, resonators, and high-efficiency lasers. Defects in Photonic Crystals: Localization of Light: A linear defect, in which the field propagates along the direction of the defect and decays exponentially in the transverse direction, can serve as an on-chip optical waveguide with some exceptional properties. More-typically-fabricated on-chip optical waveguides confine optical modes through differential indices of refraction and can display radiation lossesfor example, at the bends of curved waveguides. Appropriately designed photonic crystal waveguides are prohibited from radiating into the surrounding bulk material, even for a 90 bend in the waveguide

The first experimental demonstration was carried out for a photonic crystal comprising alumina rods with a lattice constant of 1.27 mm, evidencing 80 percent transmission around a 90 bend (Faraon et al., 2007; Lin et al., 1998; Scherer et al., 2005).

Various photonic crystal waveguides have since been fabricated with much smaller lattice constants (<0.4 micrometer [m]) (e.g., Chutinan et al., 2002), and controlled interactions and light exchange between two or more waveguides are possible (Chong and Rue, 2004; Fan et al., 1998).

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Design of photonic crystals:

1 D photonic crystal: In a one-dimensional photonic crystal, layers of different dielectric constant may be deposited or adhered together to form a band gap in a single direction.

One-dimensional photonic crystals can be either isotropic or anisotropic, with the latter having potential use as an optical switch.

Recently, a graphene-based one-dimensional photonic crystal has been fabricated and demonstrated its competence for excitation of surface electromagnetic waves in the periodic structure using prism coupling technique.

Two-dimensional photonic crystals Two dimensional photonic crystal made of dielectric rods arranged in a square lattice. Triangular and square lattices of holes have been successfully employed. The photonic crystal fiber can be made by taking cylindrical rods of glass in hexagonal lattice, and then heating and stretching them, the triangle-like airgaps between the glass rods become the holes that confine the modes.

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Three-dimensional photonic crystals There are several structure types that have been constructed: Spheres in a diamond lattice Yablonovite The Woodpile Structure "rods" are repeatedly etched using beam lithography, filled in and new material is then deposited thereon, and the process is repeated on the next layer with etched channels that are perpendicular to the layer below, and parallel to and out of phase with the channels two layers below.

The process is repeated until the structure is of the desired height. The fill-in material is then dissolved using an agent that can dissolve the fill in material but not the deposition material. It is generally hard to introduce defects into this structure.

Inverse opals or Inverse Colloidal Crystals-Spheres (such as polystyrene) can be allowed to deposit into a cubic close packed lattice suspended in a solvent.

Then a hardener is introduced which makes a transparent solid out of the volume occupied by the solvent.

The spheres are then dissolved using an acid such as Hydrochloric acid. A stack of two-dimensional crystals - This is a more general class of photonic crystals than Yablonovite, but the original implementation of Yablonovite was created using this method.

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Applications of photonics crystal: Photonic crystals are attractive optical materials for controlling and manipulating the flow of light.

One dimensional photonic crystals are already in widespread use in the form of thin-film optics with applications ranging from low and high reflection coatings on lenses and mirrors to colour changing paints and inks.

Higher dimensional photonic crystals are of great interest for both fundamental and applied research, and the two dimensional ones are beginning to find commercial applications.

The first commercial products involving two-dimensionally periodic photonic crystals are already available in the form of photonic-crystal fibers, which use a microscale structure to confine light with radically different characteristics compared to conventional optical fiber for applications in nonlinear devices and guiding exotic wavelengths.

The three-dimensional counterparts are still far from commercialization but offer additional features possibly leading to new device concepts (e.g. optical computers), when some technological aspects such as manufacturability and principal difficulties such as disorder are under control.

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Fabrication techniques of Photonic Band gape (PBC) materials

2D PBG materials can confine light in two spatial dimensions, 3D PBG materials facilitate complete localization of light and can facilitate complete inhibition of spontaneous emission of light from atoms, molecules, and other excitations. If the transition frequency from such an atom lies within a 3D PBG, the photon that would normally be emitted and escape from the atom forms a bound state to the atom. Such feedback effects have important consequences on laser action from a collection of atoms. Indeed lasing may occur near a photonic band edge even without the need for mirrors as in a conventional laser cavity. There are two methods can be used to fabricate PBG: 1. Layer-by-layer structures 2. Self-organizing structures

Layer-by-layer structures: The woodpile structure represents a three-dimensional PBG material that lends itself to layerby-layer fabrication.

It resembles (see Figure 9) a criss-crossed stack of wooden logs, where in each layer the logs are in parallel orientation to each other.

To fabricate one layer of the stack, a SiO2 layer is grown on a substrate wafer, then patterned and etched.

Next, the resulting trenches are filled with a high-index material such as silicon or GaAs and the surface of the wafer is polished in order to allow the next SiO2 layer to be grown.

The logs of second nearest layers are displaced midway between the logs of the original layer. As a consequence, 4 layers are necessary to obtain one unit cell in the stacking direction. In a final step, the SiO2 is removed through a selective etching process leaving behind the highindex logs.

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Recent works report about the successful fabrication of such a layer-by-layer PBG material made from silicon with a PBG around 1.5 m. However, this structure consisted of only 5 layers in the stacking direction. Instead of depositing successively more layers, wafer-bonding technology may be applied to single-layer substrates. Bonding together two single-layer substrates and subsequent removal of the upper substrate results in a double-layer structure. The ensuing technique is multiplicative but tedious and expensive. To date, this type of complex micro-lithography has lead to the successful fabrication of an 8 layer structure (2 unit cells) in the stacking direction.

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2. Self-organizing structures : In three dimensions a number of large-scale self-assembling periodic

structures already exist. These include colloidal systems and artificial opals. Unfortunately, these readily available materials do not satisfy the necessary criteria of high index contrast and correct network topology to produce a complete PBG. Theoretical studies, however, indicate the possibility of a complete PBG in closely related structures. Face centered cubic lattices consisting of low dielectric inclusions in a connected high dielectric network (henceforth called inverse structures) can exhibit small PBGs. The recipe of producing inverse structures from artificial opals is to infiltrate them with a high dielectric material such as silicon and to subsequently etch out the SiO2 spheres, leaving behind a connected network of high dielectric material with filling volume. Such a "Swiss cheese structures" with air voids in a silicon backbone is displayed in Figure. This large-scale inverse opal PBG material exhibits a complete 5% PBG relative to its center frequency at 1.5 m. The etching out of the SiO2 provides the necessary dielectric contrast for the
emergence of a complete 3D PBG.

ratios of about 26% by

The structure has been obtained through an infiltration of an artificial opal with silicon (light shaded

regions) and subsequent removal of the SiO2 spheres of the opal. The air sphere diameter is 870 nanometers. Clearly visible is the incomplete infiltration (diamond shaped voids between spheres) and the effect of sintering the artificial opal prior to infiltration (small holes connecting adjacent spheres).

Moreover, the presence of air voids rather than solid SiO2 may allow the injection of atomic vapors with which quantum optical experiments can be carried out. It also facilitates the infiltration of optically anisotropic materials such as nematic liquid crystals for the realization of electro-optic tuning effects and enables the infiltration of active materials such as

conjugated polymers and dyes for laser applications.

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Quantum confined materials

(optics in nano sized quantum wells and wires)
Quantum confinement produces a number of important manifestations in the optical properties of semiconductors. The optical properties discussed in this subsection are summarized in Table 4.2

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Size Dependence of Optical Properties: Quantum confinement produces a blue shift in the bandgap as well as appearance of discrete subbands corresponding to quantization along the direction of confinement.

As the dimensions of confinement increase, the bandgap decreases; hence the interband transitions shift to longer wavelengths, finally approaching the bulk value for a large width.

Increase of Oscillator Strength. Quantum confinement produces a major modification in the density of states both for valence and conduction bands.

Instead of a continuous, smooth distribution of the density of states, the energy states are squeezed in a narrow energy range. This packing of energy states near the bandgap becomes more pronounced as the dimensions of confinement increase from quantum well, to quantum wire, to quantum dots.

New Intraband Transitions. In quantum-confined structures such as a quantum well, there are sub-bands characterized by the different quantum numbers (n = 1, 2, . . .) corresponding to quantization along the direction of confinement (growth).

Increased Exciton Binding. Quantum confinement of electrons and holes also leads to enhanced binding between them and thereby produces increased exciton binding energy compared to the exciton binding energy for the bulk sample.

Increase of Transition Probability in Indirect Gap Semiconductor. As we discussed in Chapter 2, an optical transition for an indirect bandgap semiconductor requires a change of quasi-momentum and thus involves the participation of phonons. Silicon is an example of an indirect gap semiconductor.

Example: A quantum rod represents an intermediate form between a zero-dimensional quantum dot (0DEG) and a one-dimensional quantum wire (1DEG) and offers, in some way, a combination of properties exhibited by a quantum dot and a quantum wire.

Thus, their bandgaps can be tuned by precise control of both the length and the diameter of the rod.

Alivisatos and co-workers have produced CdSe quantum rods of various diameters (3.56.5 nm) and lengths (7.540 nm) (Li et al., 2001). They have reported that the photoluminescence emission maximum shifts to lower energy (longer wavelength) with an increase either in the width or the length.

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Metamaterials with negative refractive index

(REF:312 Ramakrishna.Physics.and.Applications.of.Negative.Refractive.Index.Materials)

A medium with simultaneously Re() < 0 and Re() < 0 can be characterized by a negative index of refraction. These considerations can be extended to anisotropic structures as well when Re() < 0 and Re() < 0 apply to the corresponding directions of the electric and magnetic fields, respectively, of the electromagnetic radiation. Although it is easiest to conceptually understand the negative refractive index of a medium as Re() < 0 and Re() < 0, it is perhaps not as fruitful to literally implement media in the same manner. For example, if one tries to embed magnetizable SRR inside a good uniform metal with < 0, one would not obtain a negative refractive index medium for the simple reason that the electromagnetic radiation just cannot penetrate into the metal and get the SRR to respond. Furthermore, a uniform metal everywhere would not allow the independent existence of the SRR or would just short out the SRR. Restated very simply, one requires a structure into which the radiation penetrates sufficiently and the structure would need to have resonances that can be independently driven by the electric field and the magnetic field.

In addition, the presence of the resonant dielectric units should not interfere with the functioning of the resonant magnetic units themselves. Only by penetrating inside the structure does the radiation excite the resonances that give the medium its effective properties. Consequently, the medium would need to have closely spaced dielectric and magnetic resonances such that the frequency bands of negative dielectric permittivity and negative magnetic permeability overlap, in principle producing a negative refractive index. One way of understanding how the separated electric and magnetic resonant elements interact with the wave is to imagine a body-centered cubic lattice with an electric dipole placed at one corner of the cubic and a magnetic dipole placed at the body center. In the presence of only one of these elements, the polarization in the medium screens out the incident radiation in the negative parameter frequency band.

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This happens due to the anti-phased response for either the electric field or the magnetic field. However, in the presence of both the electric and magnetic dipoles, the anti-phased response to both the electric and magnetic fields results in a propagating mode, although one with negative phase velocity. Combining the dispersions for the plasma-like dielectric medium and a resonant magnetic medium, we get

An illustration of the frequency dependence of the permittivity, the permeability, and the index of refraction (directly related to the wavenumber), is shown in Fig. 3.21. If p is the largest of them, then we obtain a pass band in the region 0 < < m, which is referred to as the negative index band. Thus, in order to obtain a negative refractive index the presence of vacuum in which the resonant structures are embedded is essential. The negative medium parameters should all be considered to be effective medium parameters only. One cannot assume a uniform and due to one of the structures and calculate the response of the other structure. It is essential that each structure functions independently as if the other structure were absent. This places restrictions on how to build the interleaving isotropic metamaterials as one has to find essentially null points for one structure where the other structure can be placed so that the fields of one interfere with the other only minimally.

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3.3.1 Combining the electric and magnetic atoms The first medium with an effective n < 0 was reported in Smith et al. (2000), obtained by combining in a composite metamaterial the thin wire medium (which gives < 0) and the SRR medium (which gives < 0) in which the normal of the SRRs was orthogonal to the wire direction. Admittedly it is not obvious that the composite metamaterial thus created would have a negative index of refraction n as the wires might interfere with the functioning of the SRR and vice versa, but the calculations and experimental measurements (Smith et al. 2000, Shelby et al. 2001a) were very suggestive of a real negative refractive index. The uniaxial composite obtained, shown in Fig. 3.22(a), consisted of wires of 0.8 mm thickness and SRRs with 0 = 4.845 GHz. The numerical calculations showed that if thin wires are introduced into an SRR medium, a passband appears within the bandgap of negative for radiation with the electric field along the wires and the magnetic field normal to the plane of the SRR.

The computations suggested that the thin wires and the SRRs functioned independently and the composite metamaterial exhibited a passband with a negative refractive index. Typical experimental results on the transmission through waveguides filled with a medium of thin wires, a medium of SRRs only, and a composite medium with both thin wires and SRR are shown in Fig. 3.22(b): at the frequencies corresponding to the stopband due to a negative of the SRRs, an enhanced transmission appears when thin wires are introduced in addition to the SRR. These experimental results have often been cited as proof that the medium indeed exhibits a negative refractive index, although in reality, the only appearance of the transmission band could be due to a positive index of refraction as well, produced by the strong interaction between the wires and the SRRs. In order to clarify the remaining uncertainties, it was shown (Shelby et al. 2001b) that a prism made of such a composite metamaterial indeed refracted microwaves in the opposite direction of the normal compared to a prism of positive refractive material such as teflon.

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Similar experiments were conducted with large samples in free space (Parazzoli et al. 2003, Greegor et al. 2003) where both the transmission and reflection were measured, and the absorption was found to be small enough to unambiguously demonstrate the negative refraction effect, with results consistent with calculations. These experiments have unequivocally demonstrated the existence of negative refractive index in the SRR-thin wire composites. In order to understand the functioning of the SRR-thin wire composite, one notes that as long as the thin wires are not placed in regions where the highly inhomogeneous magnetic fields associated with the SRRs are present (along the axis of the SRR) and the SRR planes are placed such that they are at the points of symmetry between the wires (where the magnetic fields associated with the wires are minimal), the interference can be much reduced.

Also note that the magnetic fields due to the wires fall off rather rapidly with distance from the wires and do not affect the SRRs significantly. As a result, the quasi-static responses derived previously for and remain valid in the negative refractive index band, and the SRRs along with the thin wires function independently as if located in vacuum. Nonetheless, the relative placement of the various components is crucial and might account for the differences reported in numerical and experimental data. Using alternating layers of polaritonic spheres and plasmonic spheres as the basis of a negative refractive index medium has been proposed by Yannopapasand Moroz (2005). The large permittivity dielectric spheres enable negative magnetic permeability as discussed in Section 3.2.5 and plasmonic spheres give rise to a resonant Lorentz dispersion for the dielectric permittivity.

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The negative refractive index material thus realized is potentially a truly subwavelength structure with a wavelength-to-structure ratio as high as 14:1 at frequencies where polaritonic materials are available such as at middle infrared frequencies. It should also be noted that the loop-like arrangements of plasmonic nanoparticles that give rise to the negative magnetic permeability can themselves give rise to a negative refractive index if properly combined with a dielectric resonance. it is easier to fabricate anisotropic metamaterials with the magnetic permeability or the dielectric permittivity negative only for fields applied along certain directions. More isotropic designs necessarily involve interleaving orthogonal planes of SRR and thin wires (cut-wires). Designing and implementing a truly isotropic metamaterial that has a negative refractive index as well is a formidable design challenge.

Negative refractive index at optical frequencies The refractive index is a quantity that is usually and intimately associated with optical phenomena. Shortly after the demonstration of a negative refractive index phenomenon at microwave frequencies, the research trend quickly focused on obtaining negative refractive index metamaterials at optical frequencies, where many of the novel phenomena can actually be seen. Since 2005, there have been claims of successful implementations of such metamaterials and we devote the coming section to their description and to the study of their limitations. In addition, we also note that many of the metallic metamaterials at optical frequencies exhibit plasmonic resonances and negative phase velocity bands. The plasma-like aspect of the metal begins to dominate over the Ohmic nature and the inertial inductance due to the finite electronic mass prevents a straightforward scaling to optical frequencies by simply reducing the size of the metamaterial units while keeping all other aspects fixed.

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A more fruitful approach seems to be to reduce the series capacitance by including more capacitive gaps which would then increase the resonant behavior to higher frequencies. However, simply reducing the capacitance by adding more series capacitors while keeping the overall geometric size and the periodicity as well as other parameters fixed brings in another problem. As the resonant frequency increases, the ratio of the geometric size of the metamaterial units (or the periodicity) to the wavelength in the medium becomes larger (a/ 1) and homogenization becomes increasingly questionable. As a/ increases, the electromagnetic wave begins to discern the underlying structures of the metamaterial and, as a first effect, spatial dispersion appears. At even larger ratios of a/, the homogenization hypothesis itself breaks down and the average effective medium parameters lose their significance.

METAMATERIALS (MTMs)
(REF:312 Ramakrishna.Physics.and.Applications.of.Negative.Refractive.Index.Materials)

The metamaterials are designer structures that can result in effective medium parameters unattainable in natural materials, with correspondingly enhanced performance. Much of the novel properties and phenomena of the materials emanate from the possibility that the effective medium parameters (such as the electric permittivity and the magnetic permeability) can become negative. A medium whose dielectric permittivity and magnetic permeability are negative at a given frequency of radiation is called a negative refractive index medium or, equivalently, a lefthanded Medium. Optical properties of many materials can be characterized by a single number called the refractive index, n. This number allows one to understand refraction processes and enables the design of lenses and prisms that led to the understanding of colors and dispersion. For a long time, this refractive index was a number that represented the optical density of a medium, a notion reasonably supported by the definition of the refractive index as

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Subwavelength: The term subwavelength is used to describe an object having one or more dimensions smaller than the length of the wave with which the object interacts. For example, the term subwavelength-diameter optical fibremeans an optical fibre whose diameter is less than the wavelength of light propagating through it. A subwavelength particle is a particle smaller than the wavelength of light with which it interacts (see Rayleigh scattering). Subwavelength apertures are holes smaller than the wavelength of light propagating through them. Such structures have applications in extraordinary optical transmission, and zero-mode waveguides, among other areas of photonics. Spontaneous emission Stimulated emission

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