I currently work on the mapping of optical forces in vicinity of a nanoscale tip and a variety of nanophotonic materials. My prior research involved the control of physical and chemical phenomena using plasmonics and hyperbolic metamaterials. Please see below for more details.
Research summary
Nanophotonic systems such as plasmonic systems, metamaterials and 2-D materials serve as excellent platforms to study and control several optical and chemical phenomena such as spontaneous emission, Raman scattering and photocatalysis. My efforts aim towards exploring the physics of hyperbolic metamaterials – a class of metamaterials in which different components of the dielectric permittivity possess opposite signs.
Such metamaterials can accommodate waves with very high wavevectors and have a broadband singularity in the density of photonic states. As a consequence, hyperbolic metamaterials can enhance spontaneous emission (of luminescent centers) and reduce reflectance (off scatterers) in a broadband fashion. We further show that the same materials (with enhanced photonic density of states) which enhance spontaneous emission rates, lead to an inhibition of the Förster energy transfer.
Seeking a more deterministic control over light-matter interactions, we show that excitons (dye molecules) can strongly couple to plasmonic modes of metal nanoparticles, resulting in the modification of the plasmon dispersion curve, characterized by an avoided crossing behavior. As a result of the strong coupling, we observe that the same plasmonic environment couples differently to absorbing and emitting molecules.
My current work utilizes a new imaging technique, where 
the forces between a nanoscale tip and an optically excited sample can be mapped. The photo-induced forces, which are very sensitive to polarization, can provide critical insights into the near-field of several nanophotonic materials with a high spatial and temporal resolution.