F. Javier García de Abajo

F. Javier García de Abajo

Institut de Ciències Fotòniques

Engineering Sciences

Javier García de Abajo obtained his PhD in condensed matter theory from the University of the Basque Country (Spain) in 1993. After spending three years in Berkeley National Lab., he became staff scientist at CSIC (Spain) and he was promoted to Research Professor in 2008. He is currently leading the Nanophotonics Theory group at ICFO. He has worked in atomic collisions, surface science, electron microscope spectroscopies, plasmonics, and theoretical nanophotonics. He has coauthored 350+ papers that have accumulated 28,000+ citations and a h index of 81 (WoK, Jan. 2020). He is a Fellow of both the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America.


Research interests

Javier García de Abajo’s research program on the theory nanoscale photonics ranges from optical characterization with electron-microscope spectroscopies to studies of ultrasensitive single-molecule detection, quantum aspects of light-matter interaction, excitation and characterization of plasmons by electron beams, plasmonic metamaterials, quantum friction, radiative transfer and coherent control, and graphene plasmonics. These topics cover a broad spectrum of research in nanophotonics. This theoretical effort encompasses classical and quantum methods, both analytical and numerical, which are the basis to understand and propose new phenomena with application to biosensing and quantum plasmonics.

Selected publications

– Abd El-Fattah ZM, Mkhitaryan V, Brede J, Fernández L, Li C, Guo Q, Ghosh A, Rodríguez Echarri A, Naveh D, Xia F, Ortega JE & García de Abajo FJ  2019, ‘Plasmonics in atomically thin crystalline silver films‘.  ACS Nano 13, 7771-7779.

– Dias EJC & Garcia de Abajo FJ 2019, ‘Fundamental Limits to the Coupling between Light and 2D Polaritons by Small Scatterers’, ACS Nano, 13, 5, 5184 – 5197.

– Di Giulio V, Kociak M & Garcia de Abajo FJ  2019, ‘Probing quantum optical excitations with fast electrons’, Optica, 6, 12, 1524 – 1534.

– Rodriguez Echarri A, Cox JD & Garcia de Abajo FJ 2019, ‘Quantum effects in the acoustic plasmons of atomically thin heterostructures’, Optica, 6, 5, 630 – 641.

– Cox JD & Garcia de Abajo FJ 2019, ‘Nonlinear Graphene Nanoplasmonics’, Accounts of Chemical Research, 52, 9, 2536 – 2547.

– Pan D, Xu H & Garcia de Abajo FJ 2019, ‘Circular Dichroism in Rotating Particles’, Physical Review Letters, 123, 6, 066803.

– Cox JD & García de Abajo FJ 2019, ‘Single-Plasmon Thermo-Optical Switching in Graphene’, Nano Letters, 19, 6, 3743 – 3750.

– Saavedra JRM & García de Abajo FJ 2019 ‘Visible optical resonances in electrically doped DNA’, ACS Photonics 6, 932-938.

– Vanacore GM, Berruto G, Madan I, Pomarico E, Biagioni P, Lamb RJ, McGrouther D, Reinhardt O, Kaminer I, Barwick B, Larocque H, Grillo V, Karimi E, Garcia de Abajo FJ & Carbone F 2019, ‘Ultrafast generation and control of an electron vortex beam via chiral plasmonic near fields’, Nature Materials, 18, 6, 573 – 379.

– Polman A, Kociak M & Garcia de Abajo FJ 2019, ‘Electron-beam spectroscopy for nanophotonics’, Nature Materials, 18, 11, 1158 – 1171.

– Maniyara RA, Rodrigo D, Yu R, Canet-Ferrer J, Ghosh DSR, Yongsunthon R, Baker DE, Rezikyan A, Garcia de Abajo FJ & Pruneri V 2019, ‘Tunable plasmons in ultrathin metal films’, Nature Photonics, 13, 5, 328 – 333.