Speaker
Description
Many molecular, nanoscale, and quantum systems are accessed experimentally through spectra. Spectral features such as peak position, linewidth, splitting, intensity ratio, and polarization dependence encode allowed transitions, coupling strengths, lifetimes, dephasing, selection rules, and local environmental perturbations. However, when these weak local excitations are read through a nanophotonic structure, the measured spectrum is no longer a simple property of the target system alone. It is shaped by the target excitation, the optical transducer, and, in some regimes, their hybrid light–matter response.
My work addresses this measurement layer. I develop nanophotonic platforms that convert weak local molecular excitations into measurable nonlinear optical spectra, while defining the conditions under which these spectra can be interpreted, compared, and reused. In my doctoral work, I used dual-resonant plasmonic nanocavities as spectroscopy pixels for continuous-wave nonlinear mid-infrared vibrational readout. The key contribution was not only the observation of nonlinear signals, but the construction of a measurement framework: device qualification, resonance-informed spectral-window selection, fixed-geometry readout, and standardized fingerprint outputs.
This logic naturally extends toward quantum nanophotonics and hybrid nanoscale systems. The central question becomes how to distinguish whether a spectral feature originates from the target excitation, cavity filtering, environmental perturbation, or genuine light–matter hybridization. By treating spectra as energy-resolved observables and nanocavities as engineered transducers, this approach can help extract physical parameters such as detuning, coupling strength, linewidth, dephasing, mode hybridization, and local environmental sensitivity.
The broader goal is to make weak local excitations experimentally usable: not only observing spectral signatures, but turning them into reliable physical parameters that can be understood, engineered, and eventually used in molecular spectroscopy, quantum materials, nanoscale sensing, and hybrid photonic interfaces.