Optics and photonics at nanoscale: Principles and perspectives

Nanophotonics is a multidisciplinary frontier of science that merges nanoscience and nanotechnology with conventional optics and photonics. We focus on two principal issues of nanophotonics: manipulation of optical field and light-matter interaction via various optical nanostructures. These two issues are behind all the efforts to explore, design, and build nanophotonic devices to accomplish the fundamental cause of large-scale optical integration for information processing, interconnection, and computing. We discuss various mechanisms of light-matter interaction enhancement to realize bright fluorescence, Raman, and nonlinear optical radiation, and explore methodologies and various devices for highly sensitive optical sensing and detecting, ultrahigh spatial resolution imaging, and high-efficiency energy conversion between light and electricity, heat, and other forms. All these concepts, insights, methodologies, and technologies in nanophotonics will set a solid platform to explore and achieve better future information and energy technologies that use light as powerful information and energy carriers and as prominent media to probe and manipulate the intrinsic properties of matters via light-matter interaction. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2015