Hyper-gap optical materials

Optical materials largely refer to transparent insulators and semiconductors for guiding, diffracting, and nonlinearly generating light at photon energies below the electronic bandgaps. Here we propose that a solid can be equally lossless above the fundamental bandgap inside an energy interval dubbed the hyper-gap, in a class of crystals consisting of well-isolated conduction and valence bands. The optics within the hyper-gap can completely defy the conventional rules and limits, including the low-loss negative permittivity unavailable in existing metals for plasmonic metamaterials, the anomalous-dispersion phase-matching in isotropic bulks without birefringence nor periodic patterns for nonlinear optics, as well as the negative group-velocity dispersion from the visible to the deep-ultraviolet unattainable in known dielectrics for ultrafast optics.

*This work is supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences through the Project for Young Scientists in Basic Research (YSBR-021), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association (Grant No. 2021008), the Strategic Priority Research Program (XDB33000000), and the International Partnership Program with the Croucher Foundation (112111KYSB20200024), by Natural Science Foundation of China (12025409, 11721404, 11974415), and by Beijing Natural Science Foundation (Z200008).

About APS

The American Physical Society (APS) is a non-profit membership organization working to advance the knowledge of physics.

Headquarters 1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3844 (301) 209-3200
Editorial Office 100 Motor Pkwy, Suite 110, Hauppauge, NY 11788 (631) 591-4000
Office of Public Affairs 529 14th St NW, Suite 1050, Washington, D.C. 20045-2001 (202) 662-8700

Bulletin of the American Physical Society

2024 APS March Meeting

Monday–Friday, March 4–8, 2024; Minneapolis & Virtual

Session D54: Optically Active Materials and Spectroscopy

Abstract: D54.00010 : Hyper-gap optical materials*

Presenter:

Authors:

Follow Us

Engage

My APS

Information for

About APS