Quantum nanophotonics using hyperbolic metamaterials

TL;DR

This paper reviews hyperbolic metamaterials in quantum nanophotonics, highlighting their design, properties, and recent experimental advances, with potential applications in single-photon sources and nanoscale optical devices.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of hyperbolic metamaterials' design principles, experimental exploration, and future quantum optical applications, advancing the understanding of their role in nanophotonics.

Findings

Broadband enhancement in electromagnetic density of states

Experimental observation of spontaneous emission enhancement

Potential for single-photon source development

Abstract

Engineering the optical properties using artificial nanostructured media known as metamaterials has led to breakthrough devices with capabilities from super-resolution imaging to invisibility. In this article, we review metamaterials for quantum nanophotonic applications, a recent development in the field. This seeks to address many challenges in the field of quantum optics using recent advances in nanophotonics and nanofabrication. We focus on the class of nanostructured media with hyperbolic dispersion that have emerged as one of the most promising metamaterials with a multitude of practical applications from subwavelength imaging, nanoscale waveguiding, biosensing to nonlinear switching. We present the various design and characterization principles of hyperbolic metamaterials and explain the most important property of such media: a broadband enhancement in the electromagnetic density of states. We review several recent experiments that have explored this phenomenon using spontaneous emission from dye molecules and quantum dots. We finally point to future applications of hyperbolic metamaterials of using the broadband enhancement in the spontaneous emission to construct single photon sources.