News Category
Joseph and Guanyu passed the qualifying exam!
Jun. 6, 2022—Joseph passed his qualifying exam in May just before our trip to Hawaii. The title of Joseph’s presentation is “optics and nanophotonics of phonons in anisotropic systems”. And Guanyu passed his qualifying exam on June 2nd. The title of Guanyu’s presentation is “strong coupling of phonon polaritons for engineering thermal emission and heat transfer”. Congratulations...
We attended the MRS Spring Meeting in Hawaii!
May. 24, 2022—The group attended the Spring Meeting of the Materials Research Society in Hawaii. Josh organized the symposium on quantum materials: Light-Matter Strong Coupling in the Infrared and THz. Mingze discussed his work in Tamm plasmon, and Joseph presented his superlattice work. Guanyu also presented his recent SiC subarray work, which won the best poster award (see the picture...
Congratulations to Ryan Kowalski for the NASA fellowship!
May. 24, 2022—The Caldwell lab’s proposal “Nano-Optic Probing of Vibrational Modes of Defects and Color Centers in Semiconductors”, authored by graduate student Ryan Kowalski, was selected by the NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunity (NSTGRO) to research single-photon emitting point defects in hexagonal boron nitride and silicon carbide. The NSTGRO is part of NASA’s initiative to support...
Check out our new collaborative work with Alexander Paarmann’s group!
Mar. 29, 2022—Our recent collaborative work with Alexander Paarmann’s group demonstrates super-resolution microscopy in the long-wave infrared (LWIR) range using IR-visible sum-frequency generation. The localized surface phonon polaritons in 4H-SiC nanostructures are imaged as a proof-of-concept. Check it out here!
Our work discovering “Shear” polaritons was just published in Nature!
Mar. 17, 2022—Check out our recent work published in Nature! With collaborators we discovered new “shear” hyperbolic polaritons that arise from the asymmetry in monoclinic beta-Gallium Oxide. These unique polaritons show remarkable new physics, and offer huge promise in controlling light propagation at the nano-scale! Find the article here! And a press release here!
Check out our Perspective paper on ACS Photonics!
Mar. 14, 2022—Take a look at the recent Perspective paper on ACS Photonics! We introduced the physics and theories of anisotropic polaritons, reviewed the recent progress, and moved on to a discussion of outstanding challenges and potentials in this field. This is a collaborative work with Prof. Thomas G. Folland at The University of Iowa, Jiahua Duan and Prof. Pablo...
Highlighting our collaborative Nature paper on electron spectroscopy and imaging of interface phonons!
Feb. 21, 2022—Take a look at the recent work from Joseph Matson of the Interdisciplinary Materials Science at Vanderbilt University within the Josh Caldwell group (Vanderbilt University Mechanical Engineering) and Deliang Bao (包德亮) and Andrew O’Hara within the group of Sokrates Pantelides (Vanderbilt Physics) that was published today in Nature (Springer Nature Group). The work employed electron beam methods to directly image and measure vibrational modes at...
Check out our SiC subarray work!
Dec. 29, 2021—Ending 2021 with our fresh ACS Nano paper! In this work, we exploit more complicated unit-cell structures to realize localized surface phonon polaritons (LSPhP) modes with additional degrees of design freedom. Our subarrays described here represent a modal design platform that offers the low-loss, subdiffractional confinement of light associated with LSPhPs, but expanding the precise...
Check out our phonon engineering of boron nitride!
Nov. 10, 2021—Our recent work on isotopically engineered boron nitride was just published in Journal of Materials Research! With isotopic engineering, the phonon frequencies as well phonon lifetimes can be modified. While the lighter atoms (10-B) shift the phonon frequencies to higher values, the heavier atoms (11-B) red-shifts the phonon frequency. As such, the phonon polaritons supported by hexagonal and...
Check out our new paper on hyperlens!
Oct. 21, 2021—Our recent work on hyperlens was just published in Nano Letters! With isotopically enriched hBN, the resolution of the system is increased significantly compared with the natural form. More importantly, to correlate the complicated hyperlens field with the objects underneath, we developed an algorithm to retrieve the convoluted images. The work is in collaboration with...