Investigation of chiral metamaterials by nonlinear optical techniques.

In the present context of global financial crisis, Flanders' knowledge driven economy cannot afford to ignore the technology opportunities offered by metamaterials. Metamaterials are artificial materials whose electromagnetic or optical properties can be engineered to achieve unusual phenomena, such as invisibility, negative refraction or super-lensing. Chirality, the handedness of nature, is a key parameter for optical metamaterials because it offers new possibilities to achieve negative refractive index. As such, chirality is becoming the subject of intense research. However, most studies so far have been made with linear optical techniques, while nonlinear probes are known to be typically a thousand times more sensitive to chirality, especially at the nanoscale. The aim of this proposal is to significantly extend the frontiers of knowledge in the field of optical metamaterials by using the technique of Seond Harmonic generation in order to map and investigate the electromagnetic behavior in chiral plasmonic nanostructures. The methods that are being proposed here are unique. They are based on novel ways to detect chirality in optical metamaterials, developed by the Principal Investigator (PI). These novel electromagnetic effects demonstrate that the cutting-edge research, which is being proposed here, opens up new and important scholarly horizons.

Keywords:Nanostructures, Plasmons, Chirality, Metamaterials, SHG, Second Harmonic Generation