11-09 :: September 2011

nanotimes News in Brief

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An array of nanoscale resonators, much thinner than a wavelength, creates a constant gradient across the surface of the silicon. In this visualization, the light ray hits the surface perpendicularly, from below. The resonators on the left hold the energy slightly longer than those on the right, so the wavefront (red line) propagates at an angle. Without the array, it would be parallel to the surface. © Nanfang Yu.

Electron micrograph of an array of gold antennas on a sili- con surface. The array is created by repeating the sequen- ce in yellow across the entire surface. Each antenna has a thickness of 50nm. The scale bar is in microns, its length slightly shorter than a ten-thousandth of an inch. © Nanfang Yu.

types of nanoscale resonators across the surface of the silicon can effectively bend the light before it even begins to propagate through the new medium. The resulting phenomenon breaks the old rules, creating beams of light that reflect and refract in arbitrary ways, depending on the surface pattern.

Nanfang Yu, Patrice Genevet, Mikhail A. Kats, Francesco Aieta, Jean-Philippe Tetienne, Federico Capasso, and Zeno Gaburro: Light Propagation with Phase Discontinuities: Generalized Laws of Reflection and Refraction, In: Science Express, September 01, 2011, DOI:10.1126/science.1210713: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1210713