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Students walking along Ho Plaza
Two students walking on Engineering Quad towards Duffield
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Duffield Hall at sunset.

Gennady Shvets

Professor
Applied and Engineering Physics

Biography

Gennady Shvets received his Ph.D. in Physics from MIT in 1995. Previously he has held research positions at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and was on the faculty of the Illinois Institute of Technology. His research interests include nanophotonics, optical and microwave metamaterials and their applications (including bio-sensing, optoelectronic devices, and vacuum electronics), and plasma physics. He is the author or coauthor of more than 180 papers in refereed journals, including Science, Nature Physics, Nature Materials, Nature Photonics, Nature Communications, Physical Review Letters, and Nano Letters. Dr. Shvets was a Department of Energy Postdoctoral Fellow in 1995-96. According to the ISI Web of Science, his work was cited over 7,000 times, giving him an h-factor of 45. He was a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2000. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and Optical Society of America (OSA).

Professor Shvets is one of the pioneers in the emerging field of plasmonic metamaterials, especially in the infrared part of the spectrum. He and his colleagues were the first to experimentally implementing the concept of the Infrared Perfect Lens based on polaritonic materials (SiC), and the first to experimentally investigate optical properties of the so-called hyperbolic metamaterials that enable the propagation of sub-diffraction light waves. His most recent work deals with the applications of metamaterials and plasmonics to infrared light generation and harvesting, concentrated solar energy and thermo-photovoltaic systems, biosensing and molecular fingerprinting of proteins and live cells using metamaterial arrays, optical imaging with sub-diffraction resolution using nanoparticle labels, photonic topological insulators, graphene-based metamaterials, and electron beam-driven metamaterials. He is particularly interested in the integration of metamaterials and metasurfaces with various applications-specific platforms such as microfluidics, and in developing metamaterials-inspired devices that utilize non-traditional active, nonlinear, and low-loss materials such as graphene, quantum dots, silicon, and silicon carbide. Prof. Shvets is also a leader in the fields of advanced accelerator science and theoretical laser-plasma interactions, with specific emphasis on laser-plasma accelerators. His signature accomplishments include the inventions of the parametric laser compression in plasmas, of the electron self-injection into evolving plasma “bubbles”, and of the synergistic laser-wakefield and direct-laser acceleration in the plasma bubble regime.

Research Interests

  • Fundamental science of metamaterials and plasmonics
  • Computational Plasma Physics
  • Biosensing and molecular fingerprinting of proteins and live cells using metamaterial arrays, with applications to cellular phenotyping and early cancer detection
  • Photonic topological insulators, graphene-based metamaterials, and electron beam-driven metamaterials
  • Advanced accelerator concepts and laser-plasma interactions, with specific emphasis on laser-plasma accelerators

Selected Publications

  • Xiao, B., K. Lai, Y. Yu, T. Ma, G. Shvets, S M Anlage.  2016. “Exciting Reflectionless Unidirectional Edge Modes in a Photonic Topological Insulator Without Breaking Time-Reversal Symmetry.”  94 (19).
  • Khudik, V., A. Arefiev, X. Zhang, G Shvets.  2016. “Universal scalings for laser acceleration of electrons in ion channels.”  Physics of Plasmas 23 (10).
  • Dabidian, N., S. Dutta-Gupta, I. Kholmanov, K. Lai, F. Lu, J. Lee, M. Jin, S. Trendafilov, A. Khanikaev, B. Fallahazad, E. Tutuc, M A. Belkin, G Shvets.  2016. “Experimental Demonstration of Phase Modulation and Motion Sensing Using Graphene-Integrated Metasurfaces.”Nano letters 16 (6): 3607-3615.
  • Khanikaev, A B., N. Arju, Z. Fan, D. Purtseladze, F. Lu, J. Lee, P. Sarriugarte, M. Schnell, R. Hillenbrand, M A. Belkin, G Shvets.  2016.”Experimental demonstration of the microscopic origin of circular dichroism in two-dimensional metamaterials..”  Nature communications 7: 12045-12045.
  • Lai, K., T. Ma, X. Bo, S. Anlage, G Shvets.  2016. “Experimental Realization of a Reflections-Free Compact Delay Line Based on a Photonic Topological Insulator.”  Scientific Reports 6: 28453-28453.

Selected Awards and Honors

  • Fellow, Optical Society of America (OSA) 2009
  • Fellow, American Physical Society (APS) 2008
  • Junior Faculty in Plasma Physics Award (National Science Foundation / Department of Energy) 2004
  • Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) (National Science Foundation) 2000

Education

  • BS (Chemical Physics), Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, 1989
  • Ph D (Physics), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1995
  • Postdoctoral Fellow Princeton University, 1996

Websites