Composite nanostructure nonlinear materials for optical fiber and photonics applications

Nonlinear optics is one of the mature research fields relevant to fundamentals and applications of light matter interaction. Several nonlinear optical processes such as second harmonic generation (SHG), two-photon resonances, four-wave mixing etc., have played critical role in realizing various optical devices. The nonlinear optical property of plasmonic nanostructures can be varied, modulated and eventually controlled by optimizing geometric features such as size, shape and arrangement of the nanostructures.

Nonlinear optical techniques hold great promise for applications including: Photonic devices, Optical Switching, Quantum Imaging, and Quantum Computing/Communications. But the lack of high-quality photonic material is often the chief limitation in implementing these ideas. Composites and structured materials are another choice to improve photonic materials. Composites can provide best properties of each constituent; it can provide properties exceeding those of its constituents with large nonlinear response for applications in photonics and plasmonics. 

On the other hand, Metal oxide nanomaterials, carbon materials and its derivatives are excellent candidates for the rapid development of nano photonics devices such as plasmonics, photonics and fiber sensors, etc. Extensive research has been carried out by implementing metal oxides structures such as nanowires, nanutubes, nanoflowers, nanorings, nanorods, nanoflakes and was further explored for their interesting novel properties in various sensor applications. In this context, I have explored several materials in the field of optical fiber domain, in their nanoforms, especially lithium niobate, magnesium oxide, manganites and multi-ferrite materials which are coated on the optical fiber, to envisage as sensors or modulators. Core coating or mirror coating (using Mach-Zehnder/Fabry-Perot interferometer techniques) are the strategies which are used for such sensing with the properties of magneto optic and electro optic, wherein light matter interaction mechanism is interesting.