New Materials and New Concepts for Controlling Light and Waves

Overview

Innovative ways to manipulate light and waves have a profound influence on science and emerging technologies. In recent years, there are exciting developments that have the potential to revolutionize the way we control light and waves. One development is a new generation of advanced materials such as metamaterials and plasmonic structures. These artificial materials have optical properties that cannot be found in nature and can do amazing things such as imaging beyond the diffraction-limit and confining light to the nanoscale. Another important development is the advance in theoretical methods such as transformation optics which enable the design of "science-fiction" type devices, such as invisibility cloaks, using metamaterials and plasmonic structures. These advances are the collective effort of mathematicians, physicists, engineers and material scientists. This Croucher ASI aims to bring scientists with the highest international standing to present lectures and tutorials so that the faculties and scientists in Hong Kong and near-by regions can get a better insight and a deeper understanding of the new breakthroughs.

The ASI will feature distinguished lecturers, who will give an overview of the new developments in the exciting areas of metamaterials, plasmonics and transformation optics. Invited speakers will talk about significant new results and there will be round-table panel discussions which are meant to be lively and informative. Local participants will showcase their research in the form of posters. The goal is to create an interactive environment to help the local researchers to understand the properties of these new wave-functional structures, to explore new techniques to design these advanced composites, to seek for new phenomena and functionality, and to see how these new materials can be incorporated in actual components and devices. This Croucher ASI will be held at the campus of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology located at Clear Water Bay. Commanding beautiful sea view and surrounded by nature, the HKUST campus is lauded as the most beautiful campus Hong Kong.