Title: Metamaterials - Controlling Light with Matter

Abstract:

Over the last two decades, Metamaterials have revolutionized our ability to manipulate electromagnetic fields and radiation: from visible light, to terahertz radiation, down to microwaves at gigahertz frequencies, and even radio frequency fields encountered in MRI imaging. Metamaterials are artificial, engineered distributions of normal matter that are able to control the propagation of light in nearly arbitrary ways.

Metamaterial form effective media supporting propagating waves that derive their potentially exotic properties form the average response of deliberately designed and arranged, usually resonant scatterers with structural length-scales much smaller than the wavelength inside the material. In this talk, I will discuss recent developments in metamaterials, with special attention to two-dimensional metamaterials - metasurfaces - that incorporate gain and enable novel lasers, can provide strong nonlinearity, arbitrary broadband response, or can even emulate three-dimensional optical elements using a “infinitely thin” surfaces. I will discuss challenges and some future goals in metamaterials research.

Bio:

Thomas Koschny received his MS in Physics in 1997 and his PhD in Physics in 2001, both from the University of Leipzig, Germany. After postdoc positions at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Braunschweig, Germany, working on Quantum Hall systems, and the Institute of Electronic Structure and Lasers (IESL) at the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH) in Crete, Greece, he joined Costas Soukoulis’ Metamaterials group at Ames Lab/ISU in 2005. Since then he has been working across the fields of Light-Matter interaction, Electromagnetic wave propagation in complex materials, Metamaterials, Photonics, and Plasmonics from radio frequencies to daylight in Ames.

Currently, he is a Scientist at Ames Lab and Adjunct Associate Professor with the Dept. of Physics and Astronomy.