Engineer Confined Phononic Light-Matter Waves in van der Waals Materials

The manipulation of light at small scales is one of the ultimate goals for modern optics. For this purpose, polaritons—hybrid light-matter waves that propagate in a confined length scale—are typically involved. Recent results of polaritons in van der Waals materials reveal a series of advances, including atomic-scale localization, dynamic tunability, relative low-loss, and topologically protected states. These advances are attributed to the unique physical properties in reduced dimensions and the configurability through van der Waals heterostructuring. In this talk, I will show the engineered merits of photo-lattice waves—phonon polaritons—by van der Waals stacking, structuring, and twisting. Phonon polaritons in van der Waals heterostructures exhibit dynamic tunability, various wavefronts, and new energy-momentum dispersions.