Nanooptics, as a branch of nanoscience and nanotechnology that deals with interactions of light with nanoscale objects, are well studied for decades. The main attentions that the scientists and engineers pay in this field are focused on the medium of free space and nearly perfect waveguides. Few attentions, however, are paid to their fundamental mechanisms and advanced applications in water, especially in natural seas and oceans, which, otherwise, occupies more than 70 percent of Earth’s surface. Therefore, there is plenty of room under the water to be explored by using state-of-art nanotechnologies.

Our lab is fully motivated to exploit such a no-man’s region by using our expertise in both optics and engineering. We are dedicated to solving technical problems and underlying physical mechanisms during the implementations of nanooptics in water, including long-distance optical communications, superresolution optical imaging and ultrasensitive photonic sensing. We envision that nanooptics plays a more and more important role for its applications in ocean engineering and hydrodynamics.