Full scientific program:  Symposium A 445.14 Kb

The development of highly integrated, functional photonic devices will be instrumental for the continued advancement of the highly interlinked societies of the 21 st century. While photonic technologies are already revolutionizing technological areas ranging from telecommunications to remote sensing and biological imaging, overcoming the inherent miniaturization barrier – the diffraction limit on the order of the wavelength of light - of traditional guided-beam-based approaches has emerged as a central challenge. Confining and guiding light with mode sizes below this limit leads to gigantic field enhancement and is already revolutionizing sensing at visible frequencies, with a further promise of an unprecedented reduction in size of waveguides towards the size scale of electronic devices.

Fuelled by the rapid advancement of computational, fabrication and characterization techniques, two approaches for overcoming the diffraction limit have recently emerged; one based on metallic sub-wavelength structures sustaining lower-dimensional, sub-diffraction light waves (surface plasmon polaritons), and the other one based on biology-inspired light harvesting and energy transfer structures harnessing molecular interactions. While the photonic functionality of the inherent materials response of such system in simple geometries is being well characterized at the moment, it is clear that the design of new functionality as well as the extension of the optical response to different frequency regimes such as the ultraviolet or the far infrared requires a design approach based on materials modification in order to tailor the optical response to a particular application. This requires a close interaction between the materials and the optical engineer. Furthermore, breakthroughs in this area can only be achieved via concerted efforts in devising new ways to address and obtain useful information from the optical near field.

Aim of the symposium:
One of the main objectives of this symposium is to provide a platform both for material scientists and optical engineers, in order to foster the creation of a community for a materials-design based approach to sub-wavelength photonic engineering. Goals comprise the sharing and critical assessment of recent progress, the identification of pertinent open problems, and the establishment of solutions for the next generation of photonic devices.

List of topics:
Plasmonics – Breaking the diffraction limit with conductive surfaces
• New material systems for plasmonics in the UV and far-infrared
• Surface patterning for tailoring the optical response
• Active switching devices for functional systems
• Metamaterials & negative index effects from the microwave to the visible
• Geometries and techniques for energy transfer and for gigantic field-enhancement
• Applications in materials science, biology, imaging and sensing
Molecular nanophotonics
• Energy transfer in molecular light guides
• Biology-inspired functional devices
• Addressing techniques for single molecules
• Emerging applications
Theoretical and experimental techniques
• New theoretical and numerical tools for designing functional subwavelength devices
• Advances in near-field microscopy
• Electro-optical addressing of photonic nanostructures
• Near-field optics for materials characterization and for biology
• Near-field sources: Materials for quantum-confined light emission

List of confirmed invited speakers:
Harald Giessen (Stuttgart), Ulf Leonhard (St. Andrews), Aurelien Drezet (Graz), Richard Haglund (Vanderbilt), Alastair Hibbins (Exeter), Jamie Gomez Rivas (FOM), Niek van Hulst (ICFO), Thomas Klar (Munich), Bert Hecht (Basel), Wolfgang Fritzsche (Jena), Selim Unlu (Boston), Fritz Keilmann (Martinsried), David Richards (King's College), Vahid Sandoghdar (ETH Zurich), Yannick de Wilde (ESPCI Paris), Michael Hecker (AMD), Ulrich Fischer (Muenster), Christian Girard (Toulouse)

Symposium organizers:

Stefan MAIER
Centre for Photonics & Photonic Materials
Dep. of Physics
University of Bath
UK
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Bill BARNES
School of Physics
University of Exeter
Exeter
UK
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Serge HUANT
Lab. Spectrométrie Physique, CNRS and
Joseph-Fourier University
Grenoble
France
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Aaron LEWIS
Department of Applied Physics
Hebrew University
Jerusalem
Israel
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Ekmel OZBAY
Nanotechnology Research Center
Bilkent University
Ankara
Turkey
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