Natalia M. Litchinitser: Structured light on the nanoscale

Structured light and structured matter are two fascinating branches of modern optics that recently started having a significant impact on each other.

The synergy of complex beams, such as the beams carrying an orbital angular momentum, with nanostructured engineered media is likely to bring new dimensions to the science and applications of structured light, ranging from fundamentally new regimes of spin-orbit interaction to novel ways of information encoding for the future optical communication systems.

In this plenary session, Natalia M. Litchinitser of Duke University (USA) discusses fundamental optical phenomena at the interface of singular and nonlinear optics in engineered optical media and shows that the unique optical properties of optical nanostructures can open unlimited prospects to "engineer" light itself.

Natalia Litchinitser joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Duke University in August 2018. She was formerly a professor of electrical engineering at University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. Her group research at Duke focuses on fundamental properties and applications structured light in engineered nanostructures, biomedical imaging, optical communications and nonlinear optics. She is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and of the American Physical Society.