Congratulations to Mingze He and Levi Hoogendoorn! Their article “Guided Polaritons along the Forbidden Direction in MoO3 with Geometrical Confinement” has been selected as a VINSE spotlight publication.
Mingze He is a 2023 Ph.D. graduate from the Department of Mechanical Engineering under the direction of Dr. Joshua D. Caldwell. He is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the City University of New York with Dr. Andrea Alù after graduation to further expand his research on light-matter interaction. In this recent publication co-led by a REU student, Levi Hoogendoorn, they report a guided mode in an in-plane hyperbolic material (α-MoO3) for polariton propagation engineering. In a pristine MoO3, light cannot travel along the [001] crystal direction due to the hyperbolic shaped isofrequency curve, thus referred to as “forbidden direction”. However, upon geometrical confinement in the [100] axis, a guided mode is formed and the wave is directed along the “forbidden direction”. This work reveals a possibility for manipulating HPhPs and paves the way for promising applications in nanophotonics based on natural van der Waals materials.