High-performance asymmetric optical transmission based on coupled complementary subwavelength gratings

Quantum annealing-aided design of an ultrathin-metamaterial optical diode

Thin-film optical diodes are important elements for miniaturizing photonic systems. However, the design of optical diodes relies on empirical and heuristic approaches. This poses a significant challenge for identifying optimal structural models of optical diodes at given wavelengths. Here, we leverage a quantum annealing-enhanced active learning scheme to automatically identify optimal designs of 130 nm-thick optical diodes. An optical diode is a stratified volume diffractive film discretized into rectangular pixels, where each pixel is assigned to either a metal or dielectric. The proposed scheme identifies the optimal material states of each pixel, maximizing the quality of optical isolation at given wavelengths. Consequently, we successfully identify optimal structures at three specific wavelengths (600, 800, and 1000 nm). In the best-case scenario, when the forward transmissivity is 85%, the backward transmissivity is 0.1%. Electromagnetic field profiles reveal that the designed diode strongly supports surface plasmons coupled across counterintuitive metal-dielectric pixel arrays. Thereby, it yields the transmission of first-order diffracted light with a high amplitude. In contrast, backward transmission has decoupled surface plasmons that redirect Poynting vectors back to the incident medium, resulting in near attenuation of its transmission. In addition, we experimentally verify the optical isolation function of the optical diode.

Novel derivatives of eugenol as potent anti-inflammatory agents via PPARγ agonism: rational design, synthesis, analysis, PPARγ protein binding assay and computational studies

Eugenol is a natural product abundantly found in clove buds known for its pharmacological activities such as anti-inflammatory, antidiabetic, antioxidant, and anticancer activities. It is well known from the literature that peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARγ) have been reported to regulate inflammatory responses. In this backdrop, we rationally designed semi-synthetic derivatives of eugenol with the aid of computational studies, and synthesized, purified, and analyzed four eugenol derivatives as PPARγ agonists. Compounds were screened for PPARγ protein binding by time-resolved fluorescence (TR-FRET) assay. The biochemical assay results were favorable for 1C which exhibited significant binding affinity with an IC50 value of 10.65 μM as compared to the standard pioglitazone with an IC50 value of 1.052 μM. In addition to the protein binding studies, as a functional assay, the synthesized eugenol derivatives were screened for in vitro anti-inflammatory activity at concentrations ranging from 6.25 μM to 400 μM. Among the four compounds tested 1C shows reasonably good anti-inflammatory activity with an IC50 value of 133.8 μM compared to a standard diclofenac sodium IC50 value of 54.32 μM. Structure-activity relationships are derived based on computational studies. Additionally, molecular dynamics simulations were performed to examine the stability of the protein-ligand complex, the dynamic behavior, and the binding affinity of newly synthesized molecules. Altogether, we identified novel eugenol derivatives as potential anti-inflammatory agents via PPARγ agonism.

High-Performance Asymmetric Optical Transmission Based on a Dielectric-Metal Metasurface

Asymmetric optical transmission plays a key role in many optical systems. In this work, we propose and numerically demonstrate a dielectric-metal metasurface that can achieve high-performance asymmetric transmission for linearly polarized light in the near-infrared region. Most notably, it supports a forward transmittance peak (with a transmittance of 0.70) and a backward transmittance dip (with a transmittance of 0.07) at the same wavelength of 922 nm, which significantly enhances operation bandwidth and the contrast ratio between forward and backward transmittances. Mechanism analyses reveal that the forward transmittance peak is caused by the unidirectional excitation of surface plasmon polaritons and the first Kerker condition, whereas the backward transmittance dip is due to reflection from the metal film and a strong toroidal dipole response. Our work provides an alternative and simple way to obtain high-performance asymmetric transmission devices.

Optical rotation and electromagnetically induced transparency in a chiral metamaterial with C4 symmetry

We design and fabricate a double-layered chiral metamaterial with 4-fold rotational symmetry, which simultaneously exhibits optical rotation and electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) effects. Using analytical equivalent circuit model and Lorentz's coupled oscillator model, we interpret the physical mechanisms and derive material equations. Importantly, we find that magnetic dipole and electric quadrupole play important roles in optical rotation and keeping the symmetry of the material equations. Our work offers a better understanding of optical rotation in chiral metamaterials, and provides a new and simple approach to combine optical rotation and EIT effects into a single metamaterial.

Terahertz composite plasmonic slabs based on double-layer metallic gratings

One composite plasmonic slab with a broad bandgap (40%) is experimentally and numerically demonstrated in the terahertz (THz) region. The composite slab consists of double-layer metallic gratings and a dielectric film, which supports two resonant modes. Electric field vectors and charge distributions proved that the low-frequency resonant mode originates from the symmetric plasmonic mode, while the high-frequency resonant mode is induced by the hybrid mode of plasmonic and dielectric modes. Compared with the double-layer metallic grating, the inserted dielectric film significantly enhances the transmission of the transverse magnetic (TM) waves and induces Fano resonances. The near-field coupling between metal gratings and dielectric film can be manipulated by changing the thickness and the refractive index of dielectric films. We further demonstrated that the plasmonic bandgap can be manipulated by tuning the grating width. These results suggest that this composite plasmonic slab is promising in terahertz integrated components development such as a filter, polarizer, or sensor.

Fast optimal design of optical components using the cultural algorithm

Design of the guided-mode resonance (GMR) grating filter, as one of the most important optical components, using the cultural algorithm (CA) is presented, for the first time. CA is an evolutionary algorithm (EA) which is easy-to-implement, flexible, inspired by the human cultural evolution, upon using the domain knowledge for reducing the search space as a metaheuristic optimization method. Reflection spectra of the designed GMR filter based on the CA is in good agreement with the previous simulation results. CA has both acceptable accuracy and enough high speed to optimize the complicated structures; therefore, a novel double-line asymmetrical transmitter (DLAT) is introduced and optimized as a complex grating-based optical component using the mentioned algorithm. The results show the transmittance at two different communication wavelengths (1.5039 and 1.6113 µm) using the combination of binary diffraction grating and customized photonic crystal (PhC) structure. Also, the DLAT shows the characteristics of a perfect transverse magnetic (TM) polarizer. Furthermore, we demonstrated the Talbot effect at the DLAT output which is so applicable in the optical usage, especially for the integrated optics.

Asymmetric transmission of light waves in a photonic crystal waveguide heterostructure with complete bandgaps

Here, we theoretically present an on-chip nanophotonic asymmetric transmission device (ATD) based on the photonic crystal (PhC) waveguide structure with complete photonic bandgaps (CPBGs). The ATD comprises two-dimensional silica and germanium PhCs with CPBGs, within which line defects are introduced to create highly efficient waveguides to achieve high forward transmittance. In the meantime, the total internal reflection principle is applied to block the backward incidence, achieving asymmetric transmission. We optimize the design of the PhCs and the waveguide structure by scanning different structure parameters. The optimized ATD shows a high forward transmittance of 0.581 and contrast ratio of 0.989 at the wavelength of 1582 nm for TE mode. The results deepen the understanding and open up the new possibility in designing novel ATDs. The on-chip ATD will find broad applications in optical communications and quantum computing.