From RF Circuits to Optical Nanocircuits

This article presents a brief review of the concept of optical metatronics, i.e., the metamaterial-inspired optical nanocircuitry that my group has introduced and developed in recent years. In this paradigm, deeply subwavelength nanostructures, when judiciously designed and properly arranged, may act as optical lumped nanocircuit elements, thus extending the concept of circuit elements from the RF and microwave into the optical frequencies. Collections of such optical lumped elements provide functionalities that resemble their RF circuit counterparts while operating with light. Such metatronic circuitry has the potential to provide a new platform for optical information processing at the nanoscale, with ultrafast, low-power, high-bandwidth, and deeply miniaturized operation.