My current prime research interests are in the field of metamaterials and nanophotonics that are closely interlinked. Nanophotonics is now a major research direction in optical physics and engineering. Driven by the dream of untapped device functionality, nanophotonics studies the exciting science of the interaction of light with nanostructures, at the size scale where optical, electronic, structural, thermal and mechanical properties are deeply interdependent. The ultimate aim of nanophotonics is to control light in a minute device containing only a few layers of atoms using signals carried by only a few photons and to do it very fast, within only a few oscillation cycles of the light wave. Metamaterials are artificial electromagnetic media achieved by structuring on a sub-wavelength scale. This field of research was catalysed a few years ago by the intriguing opportunity to develop media that refract light in the opposite direction to that of normal media. Metamaterials is now a major research direction in photonics. Today its meaning encompasses linear, nonlinear, switchable, reconfigurable and gain artificial media with all sorts of unusual and useful functionalities, achieved by artificially structuring at sizes smaller than the length scale of the external stimulus. Today metamaterials exploit semiconductor quantum dots and carbon nanotubes, graphene and phase change media, superconductors and quantum wires to achieve unsurpassed quantum-level functionalities. Nanophotonics and metamaterials are now among the most dynamic areas of physics, engineering and material science development of which have been facilitated by the recent proliferation of nano-fabrication techniques such as high-resolution optical and electron beam lithography, focused ion milling, nanoimprint and advanced material synthesis and growth
