Enriching contents of optical courses with cutting-edge knowledge in nanophotonics

In the past two decades, the development of nanophotonics, particularly photonic crystals, plasmonics, metamaterials and 2D material photonics, has led to the demonstration of many new and exotic optical phenomena that greatly changed our understanding of optics and electromagnetics. Bringing such cutting-edge knowledge to optical courses for undergraduate and postgraduate students can not only help the students better understand the fundamental principles of optics but also significantly increase their study interests. We have done this in the past several years and here we show some examples ranging from metamaterials to the optical responses of graphene.