García de Abajo, Francisco Javier

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 a staff scientist at CSIC (Spain) and was promoted to Research Professor in 2008. He is currently an ICREA Research Professor and leader of the Nanophotonics Theory group at ICFO. He has worked in atomic collisions, surface science, electron microscope spectroscopies, plasmonics, and theoretical nanophotonics. He has co-authored 400+ papers that have accumulated 32,000+ citations and an h index of 91 (WoK, Jan. 2022). 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

– Konecna, Andrea; Iyikanat, Fadil; Javier Garcia de Abajo, F. 2021, ‘Theory of Atomic-Scale Vibrational Mapping and Isotope Identification with Electron Beams’, Acs Nano, 15, 6, 9890 – 9899.

– Alonso Calafell, Irati; Rozema, Lee A; Alcaraz Iranzo, David; Trenti, Alessandro; Jenke, Philipp K; Cox, Joel D; Kumar, Avinash; Bieliaiev, Hlib; Nanot, Sebastien; Peng, Cheng; Efetov, Dmitri K; Hong, Jin-Yong; Kong, Jing; Englund, Dirk R; Garcia de Abajo, F Javier; Koppens, Frank H L; Walther, Philip 2021, ‘Giant enhancement of third-harmonic generation in graphene-metal heterostructures.’, Nature Nanotechnology, DOI: DOI: 10.1038/s41565-020-00808-w.

– Iyikanat, Fadil; Konecna, Andrea; Garcia de Abajo, F. Javier 2021, ‘Nonlinear Tunable Vibrational Response in Hexagonal Boron Nitride’, Acs Nano, 15, 8, 13415 – 13426.

– D. Pan, H. Xu, and F. J. García de Abajo, ‘Rotational Doppler cooling and heating‘, Science Advances 7, eabd6705 (2021)

– V. Mkhitaryan, E. J. C. Dias, F. Carbone, and F. J. García de Abajo 2021, ‘Ultrafast momentum-resolved free-electron probing of optically pumped plasmon thermal dynamics‘, ACS Photonics, 8, 2, 614 – 624.

– Yu, Renwen; Konecna, Andrea; Garcia de Abajo, F. Javier 2021, ‘Inelastic Scattering of Electron Beams by Nonreciprocal Nanotructures’, Physical Review Letters, 127, 15, 157404.

– Garcia de Abajo, F. Javier; Di Giulio, Valerio 2021, ‘Optical Excitations with Electron Beams: Challenges and Opportunities’, Acs Photonics, 8, 4, 945 – 974.

– Di Giulio, Valerio; Kfir, Ofer; Ropers, Claus; Garcia de Abajo, F. Javier 2021, ‘Modulation of Cathodoluminescence Emission by Interference with External Light’, Acs Nano, 15, 4, 7290 – 7304.

– Dias, Eduardo J. C.; Garcia De Abajo, F. Javier 2021, ‘Complete coupling of focused light to surface polaritons’, Optica, 8, 4, 520 – 531.

– Garcia de Abajo, F. Javier; Konecna, Andrea 2021, ‘Optical Modulation of Electron Beams in Free Space’, Physical Review Letters, 126, 12, 123901.