Optomechanical nanocavities open a new hybrid platform such that the interaction between an optical cavity and mechanical oscillator can be achieved on nanophotonic scale. Owing to attractive advantages as ultrasmall mass, high quality, small mode volume flexible mechanics, pair of coupled photonic crystal nanobeam (PCN) cavities are utilized in this paper establish optomechanical nanosystem, t...

Previously demonstrated integrated optical phased arrays have primarily been implemented in silicon-based platforms and have therefore been limited to operation at infrared wavelengths, where silicon provides low-loss transmission. Developing integrated optical phased arrays for visible wavelengths would enable the exploration of new applications for this technology, such as autostereoscopic di...

Photonic crystals provide a tunable electromagnetic environment for controlling the interaction between light and matter. The main theme of this thesis concerns the development of technologies to control this interaction in planar photonic crystals. Work in this area has become possible by advances in three key areas. First, desktop computers have become sufficiently powerful to simulate Maxwel...

Nanophotonic waveguides and components are promising for use in the large-scale integration of photonic circuits. Coupling light between nanophotonic waveguides and a single-mode fiber is an important problem and many different solutions have been proposed and demonstrated in recent years. In this paper, we discuss a grating coupler approach. Grating couplers can be placed anywhere on a circuit...

Second-harmonic generation (SHG) from periodic arrays of subwavelength rectangular air hole with various aspect ratios perforated in gold thin films can get resonantly enhanced for some specific geometric shapes. Here we clarify the physical origin of this shape resonance effect. A nonlinear coupled-mode theory is set up to solve energy conversion from fundamental wave (FW) mode to second-harmo...

A key element enabling the microelectronic technology advances of the past decades has been the conceptualization of complex circuits with versatile functionalities as being composed of the proper combination of basic 'lumped' circuit elements (for example, inductors and capacitors). In contrast, modern nanophotonic systems are still far from a similar level of sophistication, partially because...

We demonstrate full integration of vertical optical ring resonators with silicon nanophotonic waveguides on silicon-on-insulator substrates to accomplish a significant step toward 3D photonic integration. The on-chip integration is realized by rolling up 2D differentially strained TiO(2) nanomembranes into 3D microtube cavities on a nanophotonic microchip. The integration configuration allows f...

In this project we will consider the problem of the construction of the approximate cloaking structure of arbitrary geometry. We reformulate this problem as an optimization problem for the Tikhonov functional which is minimized on adaptively locally refined meshes. These meshes are refined only in places where the nanophotonic structure should be designed. Our special symmetric mesh refinement ...

DNA nanotechnology has touched the epitome of miniaturization by integrating various nanometer size particles with nanometer precision. This enticing bottom-up approach has employed small DNA tiles, large multi-dimensional polymeric structures or more recently DNA origami to organize nanoparticles of different inorganic materials, small organic molecules or macro-biomolecules like proteins, and...

The most common approaches to generating power from sunlight are either photovoltaic, in which sunlight directly excites electron-hole pairs in a semiconductor, or solar-thermal, in which sunlight drives a mechanical heat engine. Photovoltaic power generation is intermittent and typically only exploits a portion of the solar spectrum efficiently, whereas the intrinsic irreversibilities of small...