Engineering the Photonic Density of States with metamaterials

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that nanostructured hyperbolic metamaterials can significantly enhance the photonic density of states, offering a new approach to photonic device engineering beyond traditional resonance-based methods.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method of PDOS manipulation using hyperbolic dispersion in metamaterials, expanding the toolkit for photonic device design.

Findings

Hyperbolic metamaterials dramatically increase PDOS.

Enhanced PDOS can lead to improved photonic device performance.

Metamaterial-based PDOS engineering surpasses traditional resonance methods.

Abstract

The photonic density of states (PDOS), like its' electronic coun- terpart, is one of the key physical quantities governing a variety of phenom- ena and hence PDOS manipulation is the route to new photonic devices. The PDOS is conventionally altered by exploiting the resonance within a device such as a microcavity or a bandgap structure like a photonic crystal. Here we show that nanostructured metamaterials with hyperbolic dispersion can dramatically enhance the photonic density of states paving the way for metamaterial based PDOS engineering.