Active Nanophotonics [Scanning the Issue]

Abstract

Being able to manipulate and control light flows at small scales holds the promise to open groundbreaking opportunities for a variety of technologies. Consider, for instance, the challenges currently faced in the world of computing: as data rates and processing demands increase worldwide at an exponential rate, we are facing unsustainable increases in energy consumption associated with data centers and streaming providers. To address these challenges, optical computing and communications offer an interesting alternative to electronic-based systems. Using light for these purposes, however, is hindered by the fact that photons are not easily squeezed to volumes beyond the diffraction limit, i.e., below the wavelength scale, which would be required both to enable lowenergy computation at sufficiently high speeds and to match the degree of integration density available in electronic systems. Today, the field of optoelectronics, which combines highdensity electronic devices to process the data and low-energy data transport enabled by light, is growing at a very fast pace.