photonics Photonics is a branch of optics that involves the application of generation, detection, and manipulation of light in form of photons through emission, transmission, modulation, signal processing, switching, amplification, and sensing. Though ...

, a meta-waveguide is a physical structures that guides

electromagnetic waves In physics, electromagnetic radiation (EMR) consists of waves of the electromagnetic (EM) field, which propagate through space and carry momentum and electromagnetic radiant energy. It includes radio waves, microwaves, infrared, (visible) lig ...

with engineered functional

subwavelength In physics, the wavelength is the spatial period of a periodic wave—the distance over which the wave's shape repeats. It is the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same phase on the wave, such as two adjacent crests, tr ...

structures. Meta-waveguides are the result of combining the fields of

metamaterial A metamaterial (from the Greek word μετά ''meta'', meaning "beyond" or "after", and the Latin word ''materia'', meaning "matter" or "material") is any material engineered to have a property that is not found in naturally occurring materials. ...

s and metasurfaces into integrated optics. The design of the subwavelength architecture allows exotic waveguiding phenomena to be explored. Meta-waveguides can be classified by

waveguide A waveguide is a structure that guides waves, such as electromagnetic waves or sound, with minimal loss of energy by restricting the transmission of energy to one direction. Without the physical constraint of a waveguide, wave intensities de ...

platforms or by design methods. If classified by underlying waveguide platform, engineered subwavelength structures can be classified in combination with dielectric waveguides,

optical fiber An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparency and translucency, transparent fiber made by Drawing (manufacturing), drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a Hair ...

s, or plasmonic waveguides. If classified by design methods, meta-waveguides can be classified as either using design primarily by physical intuition, or by computer algorithm based inverse design methods. Meta-waveguides can provide new degrees of design freedom to the available structural library for optical waveguides in integrated photonics. Advantages can include enhancing the performance of conventional waveguide based integrated optical devices and creating novel device functionalities. Applications of meta-waveguides include beam/polarization splitting, integrated waveguide mode converters, versatile waveguide couplers, lab-on-fiber sensing, nano-optic endoscope imaging, on-chip wavefront shaping, structured-light generations, and optical neural networks.

References

__NEWSECTIONLINK__ {{DEFAULTSORT:Meta-waveguide Photonics Nanotechnology Applied and interdisciplinary physics Electromagnetic radiation