Metamaterials: toward designer optical materials

Metamaterials are structured materials to which it is possible to assign effective properties. This design approach allows one a control over the optical properties of materials not possible with natural materials. This has led to materials with negative refractive indices and invisibility cloaks, which have captured the public's attention. They also offer the possibility to obtain arbitrary refractive index profiles and anisotropies, for example. In this presentation I will discuss some of our recent work on optical materials and devices that can be fabricated using them.

Stéphane Larouche is an Assistant research professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. He received B. Eng., M. A. Sc, and Ph. D. degrees from École polytechnique de Montréal in 2000, 2003, and 2008, respectively. During his graduate studies, his research concentrated on optical interference filters. He his the main author of the open source software OpenFilters for the design of optical coating. As a Postdoctoral associate, then a Research Scientist, and now a Research professor he studied many aspects of electromagnetic metamaterials. His current research interests include infrared and nonlinear metamaterials.