February 25, 2022

Colloquium Topic: Extreme Wave Phenomena in Metamaterials with Broken Symmetries

In this talk, I discuss our recent research activity in electromagnetics, photonics and acoustics, showing how suitably tailored meta-atoms and their arrangements open exciting avenues to realize extreme phenomena for light, radio-waves and sound. I discuss opportunities to tailor the impinging electromagnetic waves in robust and efficient ways, in order to largely break Lorentz reciprocity and realize isolation without the need of magnetic bias, based on broken time-reversal symmetry induced by mechanical motion, spatio-temporal modulation and/or nonlinearities. I also discuss how broken symmetries in space and space-time can open opportunities to induce topological order in metamaterials. Another class of interesting metamaterials based on broken symmetries are parity-time symmetric metamaterials, which are asymmetric in space, but symmetric upon parity and time inversion. In the talk, I will also discuss the impact of these concepts from basic science to practical technologies, and from classical waves to quantum phenomena.

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Colloquium Speaker: Andrea Alù

Andrea Alù is the Founding Director and Einstein Professor at the Photonics Initiative, CUNY Advanced Science Research Center. He received his Laurea (2001) and PhD (2007) from the University of Roma Tre, Italy, and, after a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in 2009, where he was the Temple Foundation Endowed Professor until Jan. 2018. Dr. Alù is a Fellow of NAI, AAAS, IEEE, AAAS, OSA, SPIE and APS, and has received several scientific awards, including the Blavatnik National Award in Physical Sciences and Engineering, the AAAFM Heeger Award, the Dan Maydan Prize in Nanoscience, the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award, the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, the ICO Prize in Optics, the NSF Alan T. Waterman award, the OSA Adolph Lomb Medal, and the URSI Issac Koga Gold Medal.