09/01/10

Welcome to the homepage of Prof. Qiwen Zhan!

Dr. Qiwen Zhan is an associate professor in the Electro-Optics Program (EOP) with joint appointment at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) of the University of Dayton. He runs a vigorous research program and mentors graduate and undergraduate students on various research projects. Prof. Zhan teaches courses in both EOP and ECE. On this website, you will find information about his research and teaching programs.

News from Prof. Zhan's group:

1. September 2010, "Three dimensional polarization control in 4Pi microscopy" co-authored by Dr. Weibin Chen and Prof. Zhan is accepted by Optics Communications for publication.

2. August 2010, a paper with the title of "Generation of enhanced evanescent Bessel beams using band-edge resonance" is accepted by Journal of Applied Physics for publication.

3. August 2010, a Dell workstation with 12 processors and 96G RAM has been set up in Prof. Zhan's lab. This workstation is dedicated to Metamaterials and Plasmonics research. 

4. July 2010, Press Coverage in "Adding fiber pays off for industry," Photonics Spectra, July 2010.

5. June 2010, Mr. Jian Gao is awarded SPIE Travel Scholarship to attend the SPIE Optics and Photonics Conference (Annual Meeting) at San Diego, CA. Congratulations!

6. The International Conference on Nanophotonics (ICNP) 2010 has been successfully held in Tsukuba, Japan, May 30-June 3, 2010. Prof. Zhan serves the conference technical committee co-chair. The conference was a huge success. More than 300 researchers from 31 countries attended this conference. Four best student paper awards and seven best poster paper awards were given at the conference as well. The next conference (ICNP2011) will be held in Shanghai China, May 22-26, 2011. Fudan University will host the event.

7. May 2010, news release by the Optical Society of America (OSA), "Breakthroughs in Unconventional Polarization States of Light". This focus issue was reported by many news outlets, including Nature Photonics, Physics Today, physorg, photonics spectra, nanowerks, esciencenews, eurekalert, azonano, nanopatentsandinnovations, innovation-report, photononline etc.

8. May 2010, with Prof. Thomas Brown at the Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, Prof. Zhan organized and guest edited the Optics Express Focus Issue on Unconventional Polarization States of Light (UPSL). Totally 16 papers were contributed by researchers around the globe.

9. May 2010, our manuscript "Vectorial fiber laser using intracavity axial birefringence" authored by Mr. Renjie Zhou  and Prof. Zhan, in collaboration with Prof. Peter Powers, Prof. Joseph Haus, is published in Optics Express Focus Issue on Unconventional Polarization States of Light (UPSL). Congratulations, Renjie!

10. May 2010, our manuscript "Experimental Confirmation of Miniature Spiral Plasmonic Lens as a Circular Polarization Analyzer" authored by Dr. Weibin Chen and Prof. Zhan, in collaborations with Dr. Don Abeysinghe and Dr. Robert Nelson, has been accepted for the publications in Nano Letters. Congratulations, Weibin!

11. April 2010, one of our latest manuscript "Two photon fluorescence characterization of spiral plasmonic lenses as circular polarization analyzers" co-authored by Mr. Zhi Wu, Dr. Weibin Chen and Prof. Zhan, in collaborations with Dr. Don Abeysinghe and Dr. Robert Nelson, has been accepted for the publications in Optics Letters. Congratulations, Zhi and Weibin!

12. April 2010, Dr. Weibin Chen received the Graduate Research Award from Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, for his significant achievements during his graduate studies in Prof. Zhan's group. Congratulations!

13. April 2010, Prof. Jiming Wang from the Physics Department at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics joined Prof. Zhan's group. Dr. Wang will spend 6 months working on optical focal engineering and super-resolution. Welcome, Prof. Wang!

14. April 2010, Mr. Renjie Zhou successfully defended his mater thesis on "Development of high power fiber laser techniques". Congratulations, Renjie! Renjie will continue his doctoral study at the Optical Sciences Center, University of Arizona.

15. On March 18, Alain Tschimwang successfully defended his doctoral dissertation "Building and testing a high spatial resolution nulling microellipsometer using rotational polarization symmetry". Congratulations, Dr. Tschimwang!

16. On March 17, a manuscript "Diffraction limited focus with controllable arbitrary three dimensional polarization" co-authored by Dr. Weibin Chen and Prof. Qiwen Zhan has been accepted for the publication in Journal of Optics (Journal of Optics, 12, 045707, 2010).

17. A manuscript “High spatial resolution nulling microellipsometer using rotational polarization symmetry” co-authored by Alain Tschimwang and Prof. Zhan is published in Applied Optics, February 2010 (Appl. Opt. 49, 1574-1580, 2010). Congratulations, Alain!

18. Sponsored by the OSA national traveling lecturer program, Prof. Zhan delivered an seminar at the OSA-MN section on "Spatial Polarization Engineering and Its Applications in Optical Engineering," St Paul, MN, February 18, 2010.

19. Invited by the 3M Optics Chapter, Prof. Zhan gave an seminar on "Optimal Plasmonic Focusing for Thin Film Metrology Applications beyond Diffraction Limit," St Paul, MN, February 18, 2010. 

20. Prof. Zhan gave an invited talk "Optimal Plasmonic Focusing through Matching Plasmonic Lens Structure to Illumination Conditions" at the SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, CA, January 2010.

21. Prof. Zhan Guest Edited a special issue on Nanophotonics published in the Journal of Nonlinear Optical Physics & Materials (JNOPM), Volume 18, Issue 4, December, 2009.

22. In collaborations with Dr. Don Abeysinghe and Dr. Robert Nelson, Dr. Weibin Chen and Prof. Zhan published a recent work on “Plasmonic Lens made of Multiple Concentric Metallic Rings under Radially Polarized Illumination” in Nano Letters (Nano Lett.,9, 4320–4325, (2009)). Congratulations, Weibin!

23. Prof. Zhan's group published a paper that describes the smallest circular polarization analyzer using spiral plasmonic lens. (S. Yang, W. Chen, R. Nelson and Q. Zhan, "Miniature circular polarization analyzer with spiral plasmonic lens," Opt. Lett. 34, 3047-3049 (2009)). A provisional patent was filed. This work is also highlighted by the SPIE Newsroom.

24. Mr. Renjie Zhou, published a recent work on fiber lasers that can produce switchable cylidrical vector output in the Applied Physics Letters. Currently this fiber laser holds the record level of output power of its kind. Congratulations, Renjie! (R. Zhou, B. Ibarra-Escamilla, P. E. Powers, J. W. Haus and Q. Zhan, “Fiber Laser Generating Switchable Radially and Azimuthally Polarized Beams with 140 mW Output Power at 1.6 µm Wavelength,” Appl. Phys. Lett., 95, 191111 (2009)).

25. Invited by the forum organizer, Prof. Zhan gave an invited talk with the title of "Towards arbitrary control of optical focal field with vectorial laser beams and their applications in optical trapping" at the Eastern Science and Technology Forum on “Vector beams and their applications in optical micromechanics,” Shanghai, China, November 2009. This is the second invited talk Prof. Zhan gave at the Forum series.

26. Prof. Zhan gave an invited talk "Optical imaging instrumentation with spatially engineered polarization" at the Frontier in Optics (FiO, OSA Annual meeting), San Jose, CA, October, 2009.

27. Recent contributions by Prof. Zhan's group on optimal plasmonic focusing was summarized in an invited article published in the Optics and Photonics News (OPN), the flagship magazine of the OSA, October 2009. (W. Chen, R. L. Nelson, D. C. Abeysinghe, Q. Zhan, “Optimal plasmon focusing with spatial polarization engineering,” Invited review article, Optics and Photonics News (OPN), 20(10) 36-41, (2009).)
28. In collaboration with Prof. Daniel Ou-yang (PI) and Prof. Volkmar R. Dierolf at the Lehigh University, a $420,000 proposal is funded by the NSF MRI program. The team will develop a novel instrument that incorporates "Optical Bottle" and Cylindrical Vector Beams for a variety of nanomaterial studies. Prof. Zhan will contribute to the incorporation of cylindrical vector beams and spectroscopic implementation. The project officially starts on October 1, 2009.
29. W. Chen, S Yang and Q. Zhan, “Tailoring Optical Focal Field through Laser Beam Polarization Engineering,” Invited, CLEO-Pacific Rim, Shanghai, September 2009.
30. August 20, 2009, Weibin Chen successfully defended his dissertation "FOCUS ENGINEERING WITH SPATIALLY VARIANT POLARIZATION FOR NANOMETER SCALE APPLICATIONS". Congratulations, Dr. Chen! Webin stays in Prof. Zhan's research group as research associate. He will be working on projects in Metamaterials and Plasmonics.

31. Invited by the forum organizer, Prof. Zhan gave an invited talk with the title of "Recent Developments in Metallic Subwavelength Structures and Their Applications" at the Eastern Science and Technology Forum on “Micro and Nano Optics,” Shanghai, China, August 2009.

32. August 2009. Prof. Zhan's research labs moved into the new Electro-Optics program facilities in the College Park Center (CPC).

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