Professor Ventsislav Valev
FInstP FRMS
Associate Fellow
Professor Ventsislav Valev was born in Bulgaria. He studied physics at the University of Western Brittany (France), with a final year at the University of Cardiff (Wales), as an Erasmus student. He received his PhD in 2006, from the Radboud University Nijmegen (the Netherlands). Subsequently, he was a post-doc and a Research Fellow at the KU Leuven University (Belgium). In 2012, he became a Research Fellow in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge and, in 2013, he joined Homerton College, as a Research Associate. Since 2014, he has been working at the University of Bath, where he arrived as a Reader and a Research Fellow of the Royal Society. In 2019, he was promoted to professor and in 2021 he became the Director of Research for the Department of Physics.
Professor Valev’s research group focuses on the interaction between powerful laser light and nanostructured materials. He builds laser experiments to study novel materials, such as plasmonic nanostructures, metamaterials, 2D materials and quantum optical materials. He explores the physics of photons, electrons and magnetism confined to tiny volumes of space – nanoparticles or 2D sheets. He aims to discover new properties and to test theoretical predictions, seeking out new and useful intersections between classical electromagnetism and quantum mechanics. His investigations are both fundamental and applied, with potential benefits for the pharmaceutical, food, perfume, and agrochemical industries.
Nonlinear optics
Nanophotonics
Chirality
Metamaterials
Plasmonics
Chiroptical effects
Nonlinear chiral optical effects:
L. Ohnoutek, J.-Y. Kim, J. Lu, B. J. Olohan, D. M. Răsădean, G. Dan Pantoș, N. A. Kotov, V. K. Valev
Third harmonic Mie scattering from semiconductor nanohelices
Nat. Photonics 16, 126-133 (2022). Link
L. Ohnoutek, H.-H. Jeong, R. R. Jones, J. Sachs, B. J. Olohan, D. M. Răsădean, G. Dan Pantoș, D. L. Andrews, P. Fischer, V. K. Valev
Optical activity in third-harmonic Rayleigh scattering: a new route for measuring chirality
Laser. Photonics. Rev. 12, 2100235 (2021). Link
L. Ohnoutek, N. H. Cho, A. W. A. Murphy, H. Kim, D. M. Răsădean, G. D. Pantoș, K. T. Nam, V. K. Valev
Single Nanoparticle Chiroptics in a Liquid: Optical Activity in Hyper-Rayleigh Scattering from Au Helicoids
Nano Lett. 20, 5792–5798 (2020). Link
J. T. Collins, K. R. Rusimova, D. C. Hooper, HH. Jeong, L. Ohnoutek, F. Pradaux-Caggiano, D. R. Carbery, T. Verbiest, P. Fischer, V. K. Valev
First observation of optical activity in hyper-Rayleigh scattering
Phys. Rev. X 9, 011024 (2019). Link
J. T. Collins, D. C. Hooper, A. G. Mark, C. Kuppe, V. K. Valev
Second harmonic generation optical rotation solely attributable to chirality in plasmonic metasurfaces
ACS Nano 12, 5445-5451 (2018). Link
D. C. Hooper, A. G. Mark, C. Kuppe, J. T. Collins, P. Fischer, V. K. Valev
Strong Rotational Anisotropies Affect Nonlinear Chiral Metamaterials
Adv. Mater. 29, 1605110 (2017). Link
Plasmonics:
C. Kuppe, K. R. Rusimova, L. Ohnoutek, D. Slavov, V. K. Valev
'Hot' in Plasmonics: Temperature‐Related Concepts and Applications of Metal Nanostructures
Adv. Opt. Mater. 8, 1901166 (2020). Link
C. Kuppe, X. Zheng, C. Williams, A. W. A. Murphy, J. T. Collins, S. N. Gordeev, G. A. E. Vandenboschb, V. K. Valev
Measuring optical activity in the far-field from a racemic nanomaterial: diffraction spectroscopy from plasmonic nanogratings
Nanoscale Horiz. 4, 1056–1062 (2019). Link
K. R. Rusimova, D. Slavov, F. Pradaux-Coggiano, D. R. Carbery, J. T. Collins, S. N. Gordeev, W. J. Wadsworth, P. J. Mosley, V. K. Valev
Atomic dispensers for thermoplasmonic control of alkali vapor pressure in quantum optical applications
Nat. Commun. 10, 2328 (2019). Link
D. C. Hooper, C. Kuppe, D, Wang, W. Wang, J. Guan, T. W. Odom, V. K. Valev
Second harmonic spectroscopy of surface lattice resonances
Nano Lett. 19, 165-172 (2019). Link
J. T. Collins, C. Kuppe, D. C. Hooper, C. Sibilia, M. Centini, V. K. Valev
Chirality and chiroptical effects in metal nanostructures: fundamentals and current trends
Adv. Opt. Mater. 5, 1700182 (2017). Link
2D materials:
A. W. A. Murphy, Z. Liu, A. V. Gorbach, A. Ilie, V. K. Valev
Doubly-resonant enhancement of second harmonic generation from a WS2 nanomesh polymorph with a modified energy landscape
Laser. Photonics. Rev. 15, 2100117 (2021). Link
