METANANO 2020

In recent years, optical nanofibers have shown their enormous potential in areas as diverse as sensing, photonics, atomic physics, particle manipulation, and quantum optics. While their use in some areas is reaching a certain level of maturity, there are still many fundamental aspects of light propagation within these waveguides coming to the fore, such as the unique polarisation properties and the chirality of photon coupling.

This session will be focussed on both fundamental and applied aspects of optical nano- (and micro-) fibres and will provide a dedicated platform for researchers to discuss recent advances in this area. The primary aim will be to enhance interdisciplinary applications, through discussion opportunities between young and senior scientists and engineers. The session targets researchers from several disciplines including physics, photonics, chemistry, biology, and engineering.

Tailoring the interaction of light with matter is the cornerstone of modern photonics and plasmonics. The conventional approach is to couple a photonic or plasmonic cavity with light emitters such as atoms, quantum dots, organic molecules, and conventional or low-dimensional semiconducting materials hosting excitons. In the strong coupling regime - when the cavity field and the emitter(s) exchange energy at a rate faster than any losses in the system - light and matter hybridize to form new eigenstates states carrying simultaneously light-like and matter-like properties. These hybrid states enable the possibility to manipulate light and matter on an equal footage, thereby allowing the design of new devices for quantum information processing, sensing, metrology, polaritonic lasers, energy transfer and control over chemical reactions. These systems also offer unique opportunities to explore the fundamental properties of light-matter interactions from cryogenic to room temperature environments with high spatial, spectral and temporal resolutions at the true nanoscale.
In this Special Session we aim at bringing together scientists from the photonic and plasmonic communities working on strong light-matter interactions all over the world and to promote fruitful scientific exchanges and discussions.

Cathodoluminescence (CL) and electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) have become incredible characterization tools that provide an unprecedented combination of space, energy, and time resolutions for the characterization of nanophotonic materials. In parallel to that, recent advances in nanophotonics and electron microscopy have enabled the development of novel light-matter effects triggered by free electrons.

In this Special Session, we will discuss these two developments in parallel, with a special emphasis on novel effects and characterization techniques such as quantum CL, electron wavefront shaping, ultrafast electron microscopy, and free-electron-driven light sources.

Wireless Power Transfer is a technology finding its way into products. The fast development in the area is possible when academia and industry are strongly connected with each other. This session aims to provide a platform to stimulate intense communication among the researchers and engineers involved in WPT development.  New phenomena, as well as improved WPT system designs for a broad range of practical applications, will be covered in the session. The works devoted to wireless power transmission and harvesting through near- and far-fields will be accepted.

The session brings together scientists interested in recent developments in studies ranging from spintronics, fundamental magnonic properties, and magnetodynamics to their application in the information technologies. Particular emphasis is placed on magnetic materials with modulated properties, which by analogy to photonic and plasmonic crystals have been labeled magnonic crystals. Currently, photons are used for information transport, electrons for processing and spins for storage. Future developments will require integration of these separate technologies.

The principal objective of the session is to consolidate the efforts of researchers working in the field of spintronics and magnonics in order to work out new concepts leading to the practical realisation of electro-opto-magnetic devices. Future challenges for this field of science will be identified, which will motivate younger researchers to follow the new pathways and perspectives. The event will be open to the cross-fertilization between the magnetic community and those of photonics, spin-orbitronics, spintronics and straintronics thus being useful in establishing new collaborations and providing a forum for scientific discussions within existing ones.

Nanostructures and low-dimensional systems based on halide perovskites have recently emerged as promising materials not only for photovoltaics and optoelectronics, but for a number of advanced photonic applications. Recent studies of optical properties of halide perovskites suggest many opportunities for a design of nanophotonic devices due to the perovskites low-cost fabrication, relatively high values of the refractive index, existence of excitons at room temperatures, broadband bandgap tunability, high optical gain, and strong nonlinear response, as well as the simplicity of their integration with other types of optical and electronic architectures.

This Special Section provides a platform for researchers to discuss the recent progress in fundamentals and applications of the nanostructured halide perovskites.

Modern nanoscale systems and semiconductor structures with low dimensions open new paths for study and development of optoelectronic devices with distinguished characteristics. Their fabrication, especially, on flexible or disposable substrates are very promising for such applications as wearable electronics, flexible touch screens and bright RGB displays, photodetectors and solar cells, consumer biosensors, MEMS and NEMS applications, HEMT transistors and functionalized nanoelectronic devices, etc. Nanofabrication is a core technology not only toward miniaturization of electronic/optoelectronic devices but also for finding new physical/chemical phenomena via the small size effect that can be applied to the next generation optoelectronics. However, their commercial promotion is impeded by technological bottlenecks and high-price fabrication process. We discuss the concept, limitation, challenge, innovation potential, and opportunities in the emerging nanofabrication technique. Thus, a combination of modern nanotechnology such as epitaxy, CVD and ALD methods, e-beam lithography, FIB and HIM milling, nanoimprinting, laser lithography and short pulse ablation, advanced polymer chemistry along with advanced method of nanocharacterization allow to develop and produce devices with intriguing properties, which can be implemented in real optoelectronic applications.

This special session provides a venue for researchers to discuss the recent progress of nanofabrication techniques for the synthesis of materials, characterization tools, and device processing that enables the development of new emerging optoelectronics applications.

Opto-mechanics – the field of science studying mechanical action of light on material bodies possesses grandiose fundamental significance and drives a variety of practical applications in physics, biology, medicine etc. Optical micromanipulators, first introduced by A. Ashkin - 2018 year Nobel prize winner - paved a way to efficient non-invasive control over particles dynamics via focused laser beams. This investigation started the era of ‘optical tweezers’.

Recently, advances in opto-electronic and nano-technologies boosted the development of Opto-mechanics providing cutting edge abilities in manipulation on micro- and nano-scale. For example, holographic optical tweezers enable simultaneous manipulation of hundreds of particles; tractor beams provide additional degrees of freedom by attracting objects to a source of illumination; plasmonic tweezers mediate subwavelength self-organization of particles and their enhanced trapping, and plenty of other systems flexibly governing complex nano-structures.

Therefore, the main research focus of the Optomechanics and Optical Manipulation Special Session is on the up to date fundamental opto-mechanical phenomena, novel types of optical manipulators and optically driven micro- and nano-mechanical devices (NOMS), auxiliary structures for tweezing, optical binding and optical matter, applications of optomechanics in bio-physics and bio-medicine, etc.

All-dielectric nanophotonics is a rapidly developing area of research due to the possibility to control and manipulate light scattering by high-index semiconductor nanoparticles. Mature fabrication techniques, developed for silicon technologies, enable realization of ambitious proposals that continue promoting the field. It opens a vast room of opportunities for designing novel types of nanoscale elements and devices and paves a way to advanced technologies of light energy manipulation. In particular, progress in all-dielectric metasurfaces and nanoantennas, new types of excitations, such as magnetic and toroidal modes and associated anapole states, ultrahigh-Q resonant modes, etc. promise replacing conventional bulky optical elements with nanometer-scale structures with enhanced functionality. Therefore, this section is to bring together up-to-date research on this topic from all over the world.

Session aims to bring together researchers from different fields of science (biology, chemistry, and material science) to share their results. It took the initiation to engage the world-class experts from the academic platform, to discuss the advancements in the field of Material and Life Science. The results of these fruitful interdisciplinary collaborations can find real applications in the field of, for example, catalysis, drug delivery, sensing, genetics and others. The Advanced systems for applied nanoscience session will cover a wide variety of topics relevant for physicists, biologists, chemists, and engineers. So, come and join the interdisciplinary section with leading professionals at METANANO 2020 Conference in Tbilisi.

Bound states in the continuum as nonradiating sources of energy have traditionally been studied in quantum mechanics and atomic physics while receiving a very little attention in the photonics community. This situation has changed recently due to a number of pioneering theoretical studies and remarkable experimental demonstrations of these exotic states of light in dielectric resonant photonic structures and metasurfaces, with the possibility to localize efficiently the electromagnetic fields of high intensities within small volumes of matter. These recent advances underpin novel concepts in nanophotonics, and provide a promising pathway to overcome the problem of losses usually associated with metals and plasmonic materials for the efficient control of the light-matter interaction at the nanoscale.

This Special Section aims to provide a platform for researchers to discuss the current progress in this young yet prominent research field with applications in both linear and nonlinear optics including but not limited to design of novel dielectric structures with high-Q resonances, nonlinear wave mixing and enhanced harmonic generation, as well as advanced concepts for lasing and biosensing.

Plasmonic oscillations in nanostructures and metamaterials bare a potential of efficient conversion of light into current and vice versa. For the structure sizes and hot spots smaller than electron mean free path significant influence of the electronic states and optical fields at the surface of plasmonic material are expected. Understanding and optimization of these processes should allow approaching double digit conversion efficiency

This session aims to discuss the mechanisms of efficient hot carrier extraction from damped plasmonic oscillations, but also the opposite process of inelastic electron tunneling which generates plasmonic oscillations. Providing the exchange between these two research fields should lead to a better understanding of the involved mechanisms. Also, the study of the surface effects, reduction of nanostructure sizes, optimization of nanostructure geometries and new plasmonic materials are in the scope of this session.

The session covers following topics:

• Hot electrons and hot holes
• Photoemission from nanostructures
• Photodetection at metal-semiconductor interface
• Inelastic electron tunneling
• Surface damping
• Chemical interface damping
• New nanostructures for hot carrier management (1D, 2D, 3D)
• New plasmonic materials for hot carrier management

Special session on Graphene and 2D Materials will bring together leading academic scientists, researchers, and research scholars to share their experiences, the most recent results, and forthcoming challenges in the field of two-dimensional materials and van der Waals heterostructures. We aim to bring together experimentalists and theorists to review the current status of this burgeoning field, identify the crucial areas where progress can be made, and foster collaborations and partnerships to vigorously pursue these goals.

This technical session will cover a wide range of topics such as fundamental properties (experiments, theory, and simulations), synthesis/fabrication techniques and novel applications of 2D materials at the forefront of scientific knowledge (sensors, THz technologies, flexible electronics, energy harvesting and storage, biomedical, thermal management and other).
 

During recent years topological properties have been uncovered and investigated in a wide range of physical systems from condensed matter physics to optics and acoustics. While all these areas employ different experimental techniques and theoretical approaches, in all cases the topology of the bands plays an essential role, and topological properties are manifested in the enhanced robustness to disorder and defects.
This session aims to gather the researchers with a diverse physical background to discuss the recent developments in topological physics including but not limited to higher-order topological states, topological lasers and topological states in nonlinear or non-Hermitian systems.

Nonlinear optics (NLO) is one of the key enabling technologies in photonics. The dependence of NLO response on either bulk or surface properties of matter has been exploited to characterize crystalline solids in material science, to study dynamics at interfaces, as well as to devise novel light sources and advanced sensing and bioimaging techniques. The generation of entangled photon pairs, which are the information basis of quantum computing and quantum cryptography, is another key asset related to these phenomena. Nanostructured materials bring a new twist to NLO, providing unprecedented freedom in shaping nonlinear responses on demand.

The Special Session on Nonlinear Nanophotonics will confront the main technological challenges to further boost photon conversion and nonlinear phenomena in highly confined volumes, tackling current challenges in telecommunications, quantum science, sensing and attosecond metrology.

Optical sensing approaches play a fundamental role in many scientific areas and have been particularly impactful for resolving interactions between multiple analytes in biochemical systems in-situ, in real-time and in a non-invasive manner. Recently, nanophotonic/plasmonic structures capable of controlling and amplifying light-matter interactions below the optical diffraction limit have extended this field towards ultimate sensitivities and new functionalities.

This session aims to bring together a diverse group of researchers from optics, materials science, surface chemistry and biology in order to explore recent developments in nanophotonic sensing and molecular spectroscopy, with a special focus on emerging metasurface-based techniques. 

Extending from 0.1 to 10 THz, the terahertz (THz) band of the electromagnetic spectrum has been experiencing rapid progress in the last decade stimulated by advancement in methods of THz generation and detection. Weakly developed in the past due to technological limitations, this spectral range attracts much interest both in fundamental and applied research owing to unique potentialities of THz waves unachievable for adjoining infrared and microwave domains.

This Special Session gathers together “terahertz scientists” to share and discuss recent results in the emerging field of THz photonics and metamaterial-inspired THz technologies. The session covers the topics of passive and active optical components, detectors, sensors, applications of photonic structures and others.

Every year the research on metamaterials and complex electromagnetic structures offers new fascinating opportunities for handling electromagnetic fields. Metamaterials today are not just a concept, but a powerful tool of developing new antennas, RF systems, microwave devices, and components. At this stage, joint efforts of physicists and engineers worldwide are highly demanded for building a new metamaterial-inspired technology improving state of the art. Our session is a platform to share recent results and ideas on various applications of such structures in the RF. The scope of the session covers but not limited to the following topics on devices whose operational principle is based on the use of metamaterials, metasurfaces, and complex periodic structures:

• Antennas and antenna arrays;
• Radiofrequency identification;
• Navigation systems;
• Passive and active microwave devices and components;
• Quasi-optical components including anomalous reflectors;
• Electromagnetic compatibility;  
• Simulation and measurement techniques.

Exploring the newly discovered and previously overlooked electromagnetic effects in the scope of magnetic resonance imaging applications has already provided a pathway for many novel scan techniques: better RF-coils, waveguide excitation, targeted teranostic agents, advanced shielding and more – all leading to higher diagnostic quality, safer examinations or reduced costs.

This session acts as an umbrella meeting for professionals both in electromagnetic research and MRI applications aiming to facilitate knowledge dissemination. This idea-rich environment is intended for further exchange of the MRI challenges and solutions as well as advances in EM theory and engineering that can potentially unlock new diagnostic possibilities.