Stopped Light in Nano-Plasmonic Metamaterials: From ‘Trapped Rainbows’ to Quantum Memories Ortwin Hess Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK [email protected] Abstract: Metamaterials and ‘slow light’ have evolved to two of the most exciting realms of photonics, enabling a wealth of useful applications such as sub-diffraction-limited lenses, ‘invisibility’ cloaks and ‘trapped rainbow’ storage of broadband light. Here, an overview of recent advances in slow and stopped light in nano-plasmonic metamaterials is given, explaining how and why by the ‘trapped rainbow’ effect these structures can enable controlled stopping of light even in the presence of disorder and losses. We elucidate the nonlinear process of loss-compensation and ‘negative absorption’ in nano- plasmonic metamaterials with gain and demonstrate the possibility of controlled storage and release of photonic space-time quantum coherence in quantum dot metamaterials. Biography: Professor Ortwin Hess holds the Leverhulme Chair in Metamaterials in the Department of Physics at Imperial College London. He studied physics at the University of Erlangen and the Technical University of Berlin. Following post-doctoral times in Edinburgh and at the University of Marburg Ortwin has been (from 1995 to 2003) Head of the Theoretical Quantum Electronics Group at the Institute of Technical Physics in Stuttgart, Germany. He has a Habilitation in Theoretical Physics at the University of Stuttgart (1997) and became Adjunct Professor in 1998. Since 2001 he is Docent of Photonics at Tampere University of Technology in Finland. Ortwin has been Visiting Professor at Stanford University (1997 - 1998) and the University of Munich (2000 - 2001). From 2003-2010 he held the Chair of Theoretical Condensed Matter and Optical Physics in the Department of Physics and the Advanced Technology Institute at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK where he is now a Visiting Professor. .