Quantum nanophotonics using hyperbolic metamaterials

Abstract

Engineering the optical properties using artificial nanostructured media\nknown as metamaterials has led to breakthrough devices with capabilities from\nsuper-resolution imaging to invisibility. In this article, we review\nmetamaterials for quantum nanophotonic applications, a recent development in\nthe field. This seeks to address many challenges in the field of quantum optics\nusing recent advances in nanophotonics and nanofabrication. We focus on the\nclass of nanostructured media with hyperbolic dispersion that have emerged as\none of the most promising metamaterials with a multitude of practical\napplications from subwavelength imaging, nanoscale waveguiding, biosensing to\nnonlinear switching. We present the various design and characterization\nprinciples of hyperbolic metamaterials and explain the most important property\nof such media: a broadband enhancement in the electromagnetic density of\nstates. We review several recent experiments that have explored this phenomenon\nusing spontaneous emission from dye molecules and quantum dots. We finally\npoint to future applications of hyperbolic metamaterials of using the broadband\nenhancement in the spontaneous emission to construct single photon sources.\n