Photonic structures: Advanced thermal control, and effective gauge field for light

Novel mechanisms to control electromagnetic interaction, as evidenced by the recent developments of a wide variety of nanophotonic structures, have broad implications for both fundamental and applied research. In this talk, we will present two separate classes of examples of some of our recent works in seeking to create novel electromagnetic interactions, and to exploit these interactions for new applications. We will show that one can achieve an effective gauge field for photons, which leads to a rich set of new non-reciprocal physics effects, as well as a very promising avenue towards on-chip non-magnetic linear optical isolator. We will also discuss some of our recent works in using nanophotonic structures to control heat flow, which results in the possibility for overcoming the apparent blackbody radiation limit to the far field for a given emitter size, and daytime radiative cooling.