OWTNM Workshop 2024
POLIMA PhD students visit the OWTNM Workshop 2024 in Kiel and receive poster award
Two POLIMA PhD students participated in the 30th series of the International Workshop on Optical Wave & Waveguide Theory and Numerical Modelling (OWTNM) in Kiel. Topics of interest for the OWTNM workshop address the physical understanding, the mathematical description, and the computational treatment of guided as well as non-guided optical waves and related effects in micro- and nanostructures and had this year a special focus on advances in Electron-photon interactions. This year the workshop was organized by the former group of POLIMAs PhD students Yonas Lebsir and Sven Ebel. Thus, this workshop was a great opportunity for them to present their recent research work and network with other researchers.
Sven Ebel gave a talk titled "Shaping free electron wavepackets with structured light”, where a novel mechanism in free space electron light interactions was outlined. This mechanism uses the spatially structured and pulsed optical beams to coherently manipulate a single electron wavepacket into distinct electron energy and momentum states. This effect could have useful applications in ultrafast electron microscopy. Furthermore, Sven Ebel presented a poster titled “Optical metasurface based on mirror-coupled slot antenna”. This work demonstrates both theoretically and experimentally a novel optical antenna based on optically resonant nanoholes coupled to a mirror cavity that allow the design of an optical gradient metasurface for various applications.
Yonas Lebsir presented a poster titled "Strain Engineering Valley Polarization in Monolayer Transition Metal Dichalcogenides”. This research explores using non-uniform strain through specific nanostructures to boost trion emission and cause electron funneling in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (ML TMDs). Trions in ML TMDs exhibit increased valley polarization, making strain useful for quantum applications. The poster thereby showed first results demonstrating strain engineering at room temperature.
The time at the workshop was highlighted with the award of the best poster presentation to Sven Ebel for his poster on “Optical metasurface based on mirror-coupled slot antenna”. The award was awarded by KiNSIS (Kiel Nano, Surface and Interface Science), a centre for nano, surface and interface research at Kiel University.
