Novel optoelectronic functionalities for photonic devices

New materials and structures, especially those implemented with modern nanotechnologies, along with an original use of various physical effects and along with clever structural/material device designs are the crucial aspects that have to be attacked successfully for photonic devices to become even more efficient, inexpensive, and more desirable in many applications. This proposal aims at contributing to such a challenging goal. The objective of this research is to investigate theoretically and model numerically optical and optoelectronic functionalities based on novel applications of physical effects in material structuralities. Material physical effects such as third-order optical nonlinearities, stimulated emission in semiconductors, interaction of optical waves with electron plasma in metals and semiconductors, and dispersive phenomena in periodic structures will be the main focus of the studies. Nanotechnology structuralities will be considered as a means to implement such novel functionalities. Examples are Kerr-based ultrafast digital switching, plasmon-resonance optical-loss compensating, reconfigurable nonlinear periodic-structure adaptive filtering, or electrical-signal optical storage. The long term objective is to develop powerful and robust simulation/design tools for novel photonic functionalitites implemented in devices for various applications in the fields of communications, signal processing, computing, sensing, and others. Our original theoretical and numerical approaches, such as a new form of a solution to Maxwell's equations and a robust use of linear prolate functions and their eigenvalues, will be the driving methodologies behind our research work towards this objective. Achieving objectives of this proposal can deliver a significant impact on the general area of photonic devices, thus contributing to enabling the materialization of photonics' nature of being ever more pervasive into all fields of our everyday life.