In this talk, we describe some of the unusual optical properties of materials, known as epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) materials, for which the dielectric permittivity is very small. We describe some of the unusual geometrical optical properties of such materials and present theoretical predictions of how fundamental radiative properties are modified under such conditions. We also describe some of the nonlinear optical properties of these materials. Recent work has shown that optical materials can display an extremely large optical nonlinear response in their ENZ spectral region.
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