Photonic analog of a van Hove singularity in metamaterials

Abstract

We introduce the photonic analog of electronic van Hove singularities (VHS) in artificial media (metamaterials) with hyperbolic dispersion. Unlike photonic and electronic crystals, the VHS in metamaterials are unrelated to the underlying periodicity and occur due to slow-light modes in the structure. We show that the VHS characteristics are manifested in the near-field local density of optical states in spite of the losses, dispersion, and finite unit-cell size of the hyperbolic metamaterial. Finally, we show that this work should lead to quantum, thermal, nanolasing, and biosensing applications of van Hove singularities in hyperbolic metamaterials achievable by current fabrication technology.