Congratulations to Sathwik Bharadwaj on his paper, "Unraveling Optical Polarization at Deep Microscopic Scales in Crystalline Materials," being featured on the cover of ACS Photonics! This is an exceptional honor that highlights the groundbreaking nature of his research and its visual appeal to the scientific community.
The paper tackles a long-unresolved challenge: describing optical polarization at the lattice level of crystalline materials using a quantum theory. This work introduces a new framework called the microscopic optical band theory of solids, which is inspired by the band structure of electrons in solids.
This novel theory reveals "hidden waves" that exist deep within a crystal's lattice. These waves, which cannot be described by the conventional concept of a macroscopic refractive index, are governed by "crystal-optical indices" that obey crystal symmetries and have a unique optical polarization texture. The paper provides a detailed analysis of these hidden waves in 14 different materials, from silicon to more advanced Group III-V and II-VI materials.
To support further research, an open-source software package, Purdue-Picomax, was also released, allowing the scientific community to discover these hidden waves in new materials. This foundational work establishes a new way of understanding light-matter interactions and has significant implications for fields ranging from solar energy to advanced imaging.
Read the article here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsphotonics.4c01766
