Adaptive tuning of infrared emission using VO2 thin films.

Phase-transition materials provide exciting opportunities for controlling optical properties of photonic devices dynamically. Here, we systematically investigate the infrared emission from a thin film of vanadium dioxide (VO2). We experimentally demonstrate that such thin films are promising candidates to tune and control the thermal radiation of an underlying hot body with different emissivity features. In particular, we studied two different heat sources with completely different emissivity features, i.e. a black body-like and a mirror-like heated body. The infrared emission characteristics were investigated in the 3.5-5.1 µm spectral range using the infrared thermography technique which included heating the sample, and then cooling back. Experimental results were theoretically analyzed by modelling the VO2 film as a metamaterial for a temperature range close to its critical temperature. Our systematic study reveals that VO2 thin films with just one layer 80 nm thick has the potential to develop completely different dynamic tuning of infrared radiation, enabling both black-body emission suppression and as well as mirror emissivity boosting, in the same single layer device. Understanding the dynamics and effects of thermal tuning on infrared emission will benefit wide range of infrared technologies including thermal emitters, sensors, active IR filters and detectors.

Polarization insensitive infrared absorbing behaviour of one-dimensional multilayer stack: a fractal approach.

The control and tailoring of infrared absorbance/emittance is a crucial task for all those applications involving thermal radiation management and detection. We theoretically investigated the peculiar absorbing/emitting behaviour of pre-fractal Cantor multilayers, in order to design a polarization-insensitive multilayer stack absorbing over a wide angular lobe in the mid wavelength infrared range (8-10 µm). Using transfer matrix method, we explored the spectral properties arising from both the material and the geometrical dispersion. We considered several combinations of the constituent materials: SiO2 was combined with TiO2 and Si, respectively.

Pre-fractal multilayer structure for polarization- insensitive temporally and spatially coherent thermal emitter.

We investigate electromagnetic wave propagation through one-dimensional stacks arranged as truncated pre-fractal Cantor multilayer. Taking into account materials' dispersion as well as real absorptive losses, we studied the spectral and spatial emissivity in both on-axis and off-axis direction. The typical cavity mode resonances associated to the pre-fractal structure are exploited to design a polarization-insensitive infrared emitter pertaining both temporal and spatial coherence.

Evidence of multipolar response of Bacteriorhodopsin by noncollinear second harmonic generation.

Noncollinear second harmonic generation from a Bacteriorhodopsin (BR) oriented multilayer film was systematically investigated by varying the polarization state of both fundamental beams. Both experimental results and theoretical simulations, show that the resulting polarization mapping is an useful tool to put in evidence the optical chirality of the investigated film as well as the corresponding multipolar contributions to the nonlinear.

Circular dichroism in the optical second-harmonic emission of curved gold metal nanowires.

Here we report the experimental observation of circular dichroism in the second-harmonic field (800-400 nm conversion) generated by self-organized gold nanowire arrays with subwavelength periodicity (160 nm). Such circular dichroism, raised by a nonlinear optical extrinsic chirality, is the evident signature of the sample morphology. It arises from the curvature of the self-assembled wires, producing a lack of symmetry at oblique incidence. The results were compared, both in the optical linear and nonlinear regime, with a reference sample composed of straight wires. Despite the weak extrinsic optical chirality of our samples (not observable by our optical linear measurements), high visibility (more than 50%) was obtained in the second-harmonic generated field.

Optical polarization based logic functions (XOR or XNOR) with nonlinear Gallium nitride nanoslab.

We present a scheme of XOR/XNOR logic gate, based on non phase-matched noncollinear second harmonic generation from a medium of suitable crystalline symmetry, Gallium nitride. The polarization of the noncollinear generated beam is a function of the polarization of both pump beams, thus we experimentally investigated all possible polarization combinations, evidencing that only some of them are allowed and that the nonlinear interaction of optical signals behaves as a polarization based XOR. The experimental results show the peculiarity of the nonlinear optical response associated with noncollinear excitation, and are explained using the expression for the effective second order optical nonlinearity in noncollinear scheme.

Mapping the nonlinear optical susceptibility by noncollinear second-harmonic generation.

We present a method, based on noncollinear second-harmonic generation, to evaluate the nonzero elements of the nonlinear optical susceptibility. At a fixed incidence angle, the generated signal is investigated by varying the polarization state of both fundamental beams. The resulting polarization charts allows us to verify if Kleinman's symmetry rules can be applied to a given material or to retrieve the absolute value of the nonlinear optical tensor terms, from a reference measurement. Experimental measurements obtained from gallium nitride layers are reported. The proposed method does not require an angular scan and thus is useful when the generated signal is strongly affected by sample rotation.

Bound and free waves in non-collinear second harmonic generation.

We analyze the relationship between the bound and the free waves in the noncollinear SHG scheme, along with the vectorial conservation law for the different components arising when there are two pump beams impinging on the sample with two different incidence angles. The generated power is systematically investigated, by varying the polarization state of both fundamental beams, while absorption is included via the Herman and Hayden correction terms. The theoretical simulations, obtained for samples which are some coherence length thick show that the resulting polarization mapping is an useful tool to put in evidence the interference between bound and free waves, as well as the effect of absorption on the interference pattern.