Presentations

    Wrapping light around a hair, at IInd Mexican Meeting on Mathematical and Experimental Physics, Colegio Nacional (Mexico City, Mexico), Friday, September 10, 2004:
    Can light be guided by a fiber whose diameter is much smaller than the wavelength of the light? Can we mold the flow of light on the micrometer scale so it wraps, say, round a hair? Until recently the answer to these questions was ’no’. We developed a technique for drawing long, free-standing silica wires with diameters down to 50 nm that have a surface smoothness at the atomic level and a very uniform diameter. Light can be launched into these silica nanowires by optical evanescent coupling and the wires allow low-loss single-mode operation. They can be bent sharply, making it possible to... Read more about Wrapping light around a hair
    Wrapping light around a hair, at InternationalConference on Applications of Lasers and Electro-Optics 2004 (San Francisco, CA), Monday, October 4, 2004:
    Can light be guided by a fiber whose diameter is much smaller than the wavelength of the light? Can we mold the flow of light on the micrometer scale so it wraps, say, around a hair? Until recently the answer to these questions was ‘no’. We developed a technique for drawing long, free-standing silica wires with diameters down to 50 nm that have a surface smoothness at the atomic level and a very uniform diameter. Light can be launched into these silica nanowires by optical evanescent coupling and the wires allow low-loss single-mode operation. They can be bent sharply, making it possible to... Read more about Wrapping light around a hair
    Subwavelength-diameter silica wires for microscale optical components, at SPIE Photonics West 2005 Conference (San Jose, CA), Monday, January 24, 2005:
    Optical components built from structures that are tens of micrometers wide are playing a key role in current optical communication networks, optical sensors, and medical optical devices. The demand for improved performance, broader applications, and higher integration density, together with rapid advances in nanotechnology for electronics and optoelectronics, has spurred an effort to reduce the size of basic optical components. However, the miniaturization of optical components with subwavelength and nanometer-sized optical guiding structures through established fabrication methods is... Read more about Subwavelength-diameter silica wires for microscale optical components
    Nanowiring light, at Optical Fiber Communication Conference 2005 (Anaheim, CA), Thursday, March 10, 2005:
    Recent advances in the fabrication and manipulation of sub-wavelength optical fibers provide new methods for building chemical and biological sensors, generating supercontinuum light by nonlinear pulse propagation, and constructing microphotonic components and devices.
    Subwavelength-diameter silica wires for microscale optical components, at SPIE Europe International Symposium: Microtechnologies for the New Millennium (Sevilla, Spain), Tuesday, May 10, 2005:
    Optical components built from structures that are tens of micrometers wide are playing a key role in current optical communication networks, optical sensors, and medical optical devices. The demand for improved performance, broader applications, and higher integration density, together with rapid advances in nanotechnology for electronics and optoelectronics, has spurred an effort to reduce the size of basic optical components. However, the miniaturization of optical components with subwavelength and nanometer-sized optical guiding structures through established fabrication methods is... Read more about Subwavelength-diameter silica wires for microscale optical components
    Nonlinear optics at the nanoscale, at OSA Frontiers in Optics Meeting (Tucson, AZ), Wednesday, October 19, 2005:
    Silica nanowires allow the guiding and manipulation of light at the nanoscale. The linear optical properties of these wires can be easily modeled because they are a step-index, all-core cylindrical waveguides. The nonlinear optical properties wires open the door to novel applications in nanoscale photonics.
    Silica nanowires: manipulating light at the nanoscale, at Photonics West 2006 (San Jose, CA), Thursday, January 26, 2006:
    Can light be guided by a fiber whose diameter is much smaller than the wavelength of the light? Can we mold the flow of light on the micrometer scale so it wraps, say, around a hair? Until recently the answer to these questions was ‘no’. We developed a technique for drawing long, free-standing silica wires with diameters down to 50 nm that have a surface smoothness at the atomic level and a high uniformity of diameter. Light can be launched into these silica nanowires by optical evanescent coupling and the wires allow low-loss single-mode operation. They can be bent sharply, making it... Read more about Silica nanowires: manipulating light at the nanoscale
    Wrapping light around a hair, at Advances on Nanophotonics II, Centro Ettore Majorana (Erice, Italy), Tuesday, June 26, 2007:
    Can light be guided by a fiber whose diameter is much smaller than the wavelength of the light? Can we mold the flow of light on the micrometer scale so it wraps, say, around a hair? Until recently the answer to these questions was ‘no’. We developed a technique for drawing long, free-standing silica wires with diameters down to 50 nm that have a surface smoothness at the atomic level and a high uniformity of diameter. Light can be launched into these silica nanowires by optical evanescent coupling and the wires allow low-loss single-mode operation. They can be bent sharply, making it... Read more about Wrapping light around a hair
    Nonlinear optics at the nanosale, at Ultrafast Optics 2007 (Santa Fe, NM), Wednesday, September 5, 2007:
    Silica nanowires are a model system for the propagation of light at the nanoscale. Because of the tight confinement of light provided by these nanowires, nonlinear effects can be observed with pulse energies in the picojoule range, opening the door to a new class of nanophotonic devices. In addition, silica nanowires permit convenient coupling between macroscale and nanoscale. We will show how silica nanowires can be used to study waveguiding, mode propagation, and nonlinear effects in single ZnO nanowires.
    Wrapping light around a hair, at NCLT Faculty Workshop on Nanoscale Science & Engineering Education, Alabama A&M University (Huntsville, AL), Thursday, March 27, 2008:
    Can light be guided by a fiber whose diameter is much smaller than the wavelength of the light? Can we mold the flow of light on the micrometer scale so it wraps, say, around a hair? Until recently the answer to these questions was ‘no’. We developed a technique for drawing long, free-standing silica wires with diameters down to 50 nm that have a surface smoothness at the atomic level and a high uniformity of diameter. Light can be launched into these silica nanowires by optical evanescent coupling and the wires allow low-loss single-mode operation. They can be bent sharply, making it... Read more about Wrapping light around a hair
    Nonlinear optics at the nanoscale: all-optical logic gates, at Julius Springer Forum on Applied Physics, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA), Saturday, September 27, 2008:
    We explore nonlinear optical phenomena at the nanoscale by launching femtosecond laser pulses into long silica nanowires. Using evanescent coupling between wires we demonstrate a number of nanophotonic devices. At high intensity the nanowires produce a strong supercontinuum over short interaction lengths (less than 20 mm) and at a very low energy threshold (about 1 nJ), making them ideal sources of coherent white-light for nanophotonic applications. The spectral broadening reveals an optimal fiber diameter to enhance nonlinear effects with minimal dispersion. We also present a device that... Read more about Nonlinear optics at the nanoscale: all-optical logic gates
    Nonlinear optics at the nanoscale, at OPTOEL 2011 (Santander, Spain), Thursday, June 30, 2011:
    We explore nonlinear optical phenomena at the nanoscale by launching femtosecond laser pulses into long silica nanowires. Using evanescent coupling between wires we demonstrate a number of nanophotonic devices. At high intensity the nanowires produce a strong supercontinuum over short interaction lengths (less than 20 mm) and at a very low energy threshold (about 1 nJ), making them ideal sources of coherent white-light for nanophotonic applications. The spectral broadening reveals an optimal fiber diameter to enhance nonlinear effects with minimal dispersion. We also present a device that... Read more about Nonlinear optics at the nanoscale