Recent observation of efficient light emission from porous silicon has attracted much attention and renewed interests in the study of nonlinear optical properties of nanometer-sized quantum systems. In this paper, we study the third-order nonlinear optical susceptibility of semiconductor quantum wires. The quantum wires are taken to be circular columns with a cross section size of —1 nm. The ex...

Design and fabrication of a 2×2 two-mode interference (TMI) coupler based on-chip polarization splitter is presented. By changing the angle between the access waveguides, one can tune the effective TMI length for the mode with less optical confinement (transverse magnetic, TM) to coincide with the target TMI length for a desired transmission of the mode with higher optical confinement (transver...

We experimentally characterize the field confinement properties of various parallel-plate waveguide (PPWG) geometries in the terahertz spectral range. In contrast to infinite-width PPWGs with free-space diffraction along the unshielded direction, finite-width (and also tapered) PPWGs showwell-confined THz fields at the output facet. Both the transverse field component, perpendicular to the insi...

We report on the fabrication and optical assessment of an all-solid tellurite-glass photonic bandgap fiber. The manufacturing process via a preform drawing approach and the fiber characterization procedures are described and discussed. The fiber exhibits some minor morphological deformations that do not prevent the observation of optical confinement within the fiber by bandgap effects. The expe...

We show that the photonic confinement induced by a photonic crystal can be exploited to trap nanoparticles. As demonstrated by the recent advances in the design and fabrication of photonic crystals slab structures, total internal reflection and multiple scattering can be combined to confine photons very efficiently. A consequence of this confinement is the existence of strong gradients of elect...

Optofluidic transport represents the fusion of optics with microfluidics to create a new paradigm for nanoscale transport. Optofluidic transport exploits the favorable transport properties of light for the manipulation of objects in nanoscale systems. Here we demonstrate, for the first time, trapping and confinement of dielectric nanoparticles (75 and 100 nm polystyrene nanoparticle beads) usin...

Recent advances in semiconductor nanostructure syntheses provide unprecedented control over electronic quantum confinement and have led to extensive investigations of their size- and shape-dependent optical/electrical properties. Notably, spectroscopic measurements show that optical bandgaps of one-dimensional CdSe nanowires are substantially (approximately 100 meV) lower than their zero-dimens...

We study the excitonic effects on the second-order nonlinear optical properties of semi-spherical quantum dots considering, on the same footing, the confinement potential of the electron-hole pair and the Coulomb interaction between them. The exciton is confined in a semi-spherical geometry by means of a three-dimensional semi-parabolic potential. We calculate the optical rectification and seco...

The efficiency of plasmonic nanostructures as optical antennas to concentrate optical fields to the nanoscale has been limited by intrinsically short dephasing times and small absorption cross sections. We discuss a new optical antenna concept based on surface plasmon polariton (SPP) nanofocusing on conical noble metal tips to achieve efficient far- to near-field transformation of light from th...