On June 19, 2024, Professor Lei Dangyuan from City University of Hong Kong visited the college and was invited to the "Science Light Scientists Forum", where he gave an academic report titled "Symmetry-Broken Plasmonic Nanocavity-Enhanced Second Harmonic Generation" for the teachers and students of the college.
In this report, Professor Lei Dangyuan explored three optical physics phenomena that had long been overlooked in symmetry-broken plasmonic nanocavities, including: light-induced electromagnetic asymmetric enhancement of second harmonic generation (SHG) on the surface of noble metals. This new physical mechanism has increased the conversion efficiency of SHG by three orders of magnitude compared to traditional enhancement strategies; the second-order nonlinear optical response induced by photon-assisted quantum tunneling in plasmonic molecular nanojunctions, which is expected to serve as a brand-new all-optical single-molecule quantum sensing paradigm; the plasmon-induced optical magnetism in asymmetric nanocavities with nanoparticle dimer-mirror coupling and its theoretical analysis as a new second-order optical nonlinear source.
Lei Dangyuan is a professor at City University of Hong Kong, the deputy director of the Center for Functional Photonics Research, a doctor of Imperial College London and a visiting professor of the provost, an academician of the Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars (Hong Kong and Macau). He has been engaged in the research on ultrafast nonlinear spectroscopy of nanoscale quantum photonics and low-dimensional quantum optical materials for a long time. So far, he has published a total of 230 academic papers. Among them, the research on multi-photon pumping and ultra-low threshold quantum dot lasers was selected as one of the 50 most-read articles in the field of physics in Nature Communications in 2020. His applications in green buildings and thermal management of electronic devices have won two gold medals at the Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions.
