Each month, Physics Today editors explore the research and design choices that inspired the latest cover of the magazine.
When light shines on metal nanoparticles, the free electrons in the metal oscillate in resonances known as surface plasmons. Those resonances, or charge-density oscillations, create an electric dipole that confines and amplifies electric fields in a tiny volume known as a hot spot. Researchers can tailor the shape of those nanoparticles to tune their optical responses for countless applications. The article by Jennifer Dionne, Sahil Dagli, and Vladimir M. Shalaev in the June issue discusses several of them, including plasmon catalysis, solar-energy harvesting, and quantum computing.
Much as researchers tailor the shapes, sizes, and densities of nanoparticles for practical ends, the California artist Kate Nichols does the same thing to create the colors she wants. For her 2017 painting That We May See in a Chamber Things That Are Not 6, featured on the cover of this month’s Physics Today, she laid custom-made silver nanoparticles as paint atop glass. Metal nanoparticles were familiar even to medieval artisans, who used them to tune the color of stained glass in windows. Nichols learned far more modern synthesis protocols while serving as an artist-in-residence in the lab of chemist and materials scientist Paul Alivisatos at the University of California, Berkeley.
For Nichols, the cover image resembles Earth’s northern lights. Physics Today’s art designer, Freddie Pagani, adopted the light blue shade in the painting for the lettering of the magazine’s name so that the text would stand out against the painting’s black background. She decided on the Orator font for the word “NANOPHOTONICS’ ” for its simple look, especially when paired with the font she chose, Bitcount, for “BRIGHT FUTURE” in the cover line. “I thought it conveyed a futuristic feel,” she says.
“That we may see in a chamber things that are not” refers to 16th-century polymath Giambattista della Porta’s description of an optical illusion, later known as Pepper’s ghost and used to create projections of ghosts in Victorian plays. What inspired the paintings? “From the beginning, advances in optics have been driven by dual desires: to see what is, and what is not,” Nichols writes in a description of her work. “This duality is palpable in these paintings, which, being nonrepresentational, are resolutely themselves, all the while offering glimpses of imaginal realms.”
