Congratulations to Yueming Yan, recipient of the 2025 VINSE Outstanding Student Publication Award. Yueming’s paper, published in Science Advances, reports on harmonic-induced plasmonic resonant energy transfer between metal and semiconductor nanoparticles, a discovery that pushes the boundaries of nonlinear optics at the nanoscale.
This research confirms both experimentally and theoretically that sum-frequency and Nth-harmonic generation (SFG and NFG) processes in metal–semiconductor nanoparticle composites are governed by the inverse sixth-power dynamics characteristic of dipole–dipole interactions. By carefully engineering spacer layers between nanoparticles and probing ultrafast energy-exchange dynamics, Yueming and colleagues established a detailed picture of how nonlinear energy transfer unfolds across nanometer-length scales. Computational physics further verified that the unique layered architecture drives this resonant SFG/NFG response.
The work not only advances our understanding of high-order frequency generation but also opens new avenues for applications in quantum photonics, including the possibility of generating entangled photon pairs through spontaneous parametric down-conversion in engineered nanocomposites.
The VINSE Outstanding Student Publication Award comes with a cash prize, and Yueming will deliver the graduate student presentation at the 25th Annual Nanoscience & Nanotechnology Forum (NanoDay) on November 13, 2025.