Next Seminar
Seminar 3 – S5, Tuesday 29 October 2024, 14:00 (London Time)
Speaker: dr. Andrea Alù
Title: Hyperbolic elastic waves
Abstract: Hyperbolic metasurfaces have been offering an interesting platform to tailor waves, enabling subdiffractional wave propagation and enhanced wave-matter interactions thanks to their anisotropic features and open-topology dispersion. In this work, I will discuss their implementation for elastic waves, and the application of the peculiar propagation features of hyperbolic surface waves in complex geometries. I discuss in particular the emergence of hyperbolic wave attractors in oddly shaped cavities formed by extremely anisotropic media, and the design and implementation of hyperbolic lenses that mimic the problem of optimal airplane boarding in an analog-domain computing platform driven by hyperbolic surface waves.
Biography: Andrea Alù is a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), the Einstein Professor of Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center, and the Founding Director of the Photonics Initiative at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center. He received his Laurea (2001) and PhD (2007) from the University of Roma Tre, Italy, and, after a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in 2009, where he was the Temple Foundation Endowed Professor until Jan. 2018. Dr. Alù is a Fellow of NAI, AAAS, IEEE, MRS, OSA, SPIE and APS, and has received several scientific awards, including the Blavatnik National Award in Physics and Engineering, the Brillouin Medal, the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship from DoD, the NSF Alan T. Waterman award, and the URSI Issac Koga Gold Medal.