Executive Summary : | Metamaterials have become an efficient approach for interacting with electromagnetic waves in modern photonics. These sub-wavelength sized resonators have numerous important features over the electromagnetic spectrum, such as perfect absorption, wavelength selective emission, broadband modulation, beam steering, subwavelength focusing, and ultrasensitive sensors. Metamaterials could be an ideal platform to drive novel material systems into out-of-equilibrium regimes through intense electromagnetic resonant interaction in extremely small mode volumes. They could also develop hybrid metamaterial devices with low energy and ultrafast switching response based on the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the novel material systems. Metamaterial embedded with novel material systems can drive the material far from equilibrium or manipulate the metamaterial response, enabling novel functionalities to develop next-generation terahertz devices. This investigation would aid in the development of high-performance photonic devices and enable fundamental understanding of specific aspects of the material physics. The proposal can be broadly categorized into two parts: (i) Generation and investigation of out-of-equilibrium matter and ultrafast control of the driven phases, and (ii) Development of out-of-equilibrium devices exploiting the out-of-equilibrium response of novel materials. This work will investigate atomically thin two-dimensional materials such as graphene, hexagonal boron nitride, black phosphorus, Dirac semimetals, transition metal mono and dichalcogenides, phase change materials, ferromagnets, excitonic insulators, perovskites, superconductors, and ferromagnet/heavy (FM/HM) metal interfaces. |