Professor Alexandra Boltasseva, Purdue University

General Colloquium: Advancing Nanophotonics: From Materials to Machine-Learning Assisted Designs

Host: Professor David Nolte

Abstract: The recent advent of tailorable photonic materials such as plasmonic ceramics including transition metal nitrides (TMNs), MXenes and transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) is currently driving the development of compact, chip-compatible devices for information technology, communication, sustainable energy and emerging quantum photonic applications. In addition to great tailorability of their optical properties, strong plasmonic behavior, optical nonlinearities, these materials offer pathways to uncovering new physics and optical phenomena ranging from transdimensional photonics to epsilon-near-zero behavior and photonic time crystals. In this lecture, we explore novel applications of TMNs (titanium nitride, zirconium nitride) and TCOs for flat optics, all-optical switching, high-harmonic-based XUV generation as well as for demonstrating new physical effects in near-zero-index materials and atomically thin, transdimensional plasmonic films related to strong light confinement and metal-to-insulator transision. Our work paves the way to novel phenomena and device design with ultrafast tunable and tailorable optical materials.

Bio: Alexandra Boltasseva is a Ron and Dotty Garvin Tonjes Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering with courtesy appointment in Materials Engineering at Purdue University. She received her PhD in electrical engineering at Technical University of Denmark, DTU in 2004. Boltasseva specializes in nanophotonics, quantum photonics, and optical materials. She is the 2023 recipient of the R.W. Wood Prize (Optica, formerly Optical Society of America), 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, 2018 Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists Finalist and received the 2013 Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Photonics Society Young Investigator Award, 2013 Materials Research Society (MRS) Outstanding Young Investigator Award, the 2011 MIT Technology Review Top Young Innovator (TR35), the 2009 Young Researcher Award in Advanced Optical Technologies from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, and the Young Elite-Researcher Award from the Danish Council for Independent Research (2008). She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) (2020), MRS (2021), IEEE (2020), Optica (2017), and International Society for Optical Engineers (SPIE) (2015). She served on MRS Board of Directors (2014-2016) and is past Editor-in-Chief for Optical Materials Express journal, Optica Publishing group (2016-2021).