Seminar: Stavroula Foteinopoulou

November 15, 2024

Revisiting Diffraction Gratings: From Transmission Asymmetry to Reconfigurable Photonics

Stavroula Foteinopoulou, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UNM

3:00 pm, UNM Centennial Engineering Center, Room 1026
Online Guests: Contact Prof. Osiński <osinski@chtm.unm.edu> for a Zoom link

Abstract: Diffraction gratings are ubiquitous in optical set-ups for integrated photonics owing to their capability to transform the lateral momentum of light thus allowing to engineer the incoupling and out-coupling of optical beams. In this seminar, the fundamental underlying principles that bring new exotic capabilities to these traditional components will be discussed. In particular, it will be shown that a strongly asymmetric transmission can be obtained from a diffraction grating with pyramidal-shaped elements. Additionally, it will be demonstrated that on-off switching of negative beam-steering for MWIR light can be achieved by incorporating into the diffraction grating a suitable non-volatile phase-change material.

Bio: Dr. Stavroula Foteinopoulou is a Research Professor with the ECE Dept. at UNM. She received her Ph.D. from Iowa State U. and has held positions in U. of Namur (Belgium), FORTH (Greece), and U. of Exeter (UK). Her research focuses on theory and design of photonic platforms for extraordinary light control across the EM spectrum. She holds one US patent and has authored more than 40 journal publications and conference papers, which to-date received more than 3600 citations (source Google Scholar). She is serving as the feature editor for the Optica (formerly OSA) Optical Materials Express Journal, as an associate editor for the Journal of the European Optical Society: Rapid Publications, and has been the Chair of the annual SPIE conference on Active Photonic Platforms for more than 10 years. In 2016, she was honored by the American Physical Society (APS) as an outstanding referee, which is a lifetime recognition.