Think big - think Micro !
Microscience is the big brother of Nanoscience. I use
this term because even the most "nano" structure won't do
anything useful unless it is coupled to a much larger system
(measurement apparatus, observer, universe ...). That's what I am
interested in - essentially, it's what makes
Nanoscience into Nanotechnology.
Examining the technological aspects of nano-and microscale
systems seriously, one is invariably faced with
a multiscale problem.
The twilight zone between micro and macro length scales is
"mesoscopic physics". Historically, i.e. since the Eighties of the
last century (the twentieth), mesoscopic physics had to deal with
micro- and nanostructure experiments that were rather
dirty, in the sense that disorder often dominated the
behavior of small devices. Microstructures nowadays, on the other
hand, profit from significant advances in fabrication technologies
which lead to cleaner systems. Their properties are then
dominated by boundary effects. Boundaries and interfaces
between large and small systems are a central theme in
microscience.
Although fabrication-technological advances were largely driven
by the microelectronics industry, micro-optical devices have
emerged as an important class of systems where fundamental problems
of microscience have a direct impact upon applications.
Micro-optics therefore has become the focus of my work since 1995,
motivated by collaborations with experimental groups at Yale
University, Lucent Technologies, France Telecom and Darmstadt
University of Technology.
Details on these collaborations can be
found in my bibliography; to see how these questions are
connected with the theory of nonlinear dynamics and chaos, please
take a look at the Hitchhiker's guide to
dielectric cavities.
NNavigating (or IExploring) this site
A good way of getting an overview of this site is to browse the
example systems by clicking on
For more programmatic information, you may want to start
with
which describes my research interests and the context of my current
work.
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