Understanding new regimes for light-matter interactions

This thesis focuses on achieving new understanding of the principles and phenomena involved in the interaction of light with a variety of complicated material systems, including biomaterials and nanostructured materials. We will show that bone piezoelectricity may be a source of intense blast-induced electric fields in the brain, with magnitudes and timescales comparable to fields with known neurological effects, and may play a role in blast-induced traumatic brain injury. We will also shed new light on the localization of photons in a variety of complex microstructured waveguides. We will reveal the principles behind the design of single-polarization waveguides, including design strategies that did not seem to have been considered previously. Finally, we designed a 3D photonic crystal slab structure to exhibit negative-index behavior at visible wavelengths, which was fabricated and experimentally demonstrated by our collaborators to show negative refraction with, to our knowledge, the lowest loss at visible wavelengths to date.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Lee, Ka Yan Karen

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Steven G. Johnson.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/66018

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/66018