Imagine holding a translucent slide, such as a frame from a film strip or a camera roll. You look through this slide at a light source and see an image. Then you flip the translucent slide and see a completely different image. Common sense might suggest that this is impossible, and physics says that this violates the Lorentz reciprocity theorem.

In this talk, I will share our recent demonstrations of such nonreciprocal slides made with the help of nanotechnology and the concept of metasurfaces – ultra-thin optical components engineered at the nanometer-scale.

Over just a few years we have seen tremendous progress in metasurfaces from fundamental concepts to mass-manufactured products replacing conventional bulky optics. Our current research on metasurfaces aims to address a vital problem of contemporary optics and photonics: nonreciprocal optical response at the nanoscale. The 21st century technologies might depend on nonreciprocal nanoscale optics as much as the 20th century technologies depended on nanoscale nonreciprocal electronics – semiconductor diodes and transistors.

Dr. Sergey Kruk is an ARC DECRA Fellow at the Nonlinear Physics Centre, Department of Fundamental and Theoretical Physics. He designs, fabricates, and performs optical diagnostics of nanoscale optical components – so small that thousands of them can fit within a cross-section of a hair. Dr. Kruk has been a recipient of Marie SkÅ‚odowska-Curie Fellowship (European Research Council) and of Humboldt Fellowship (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany). His research was recognised by the Australian Optical Society with Geoff Opat Prize, and by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics with Young Scientist Award.

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