Light propagation in honeycomb arrays of metallic
nanoparticles mimics the properties of electrons in graphene, paving the way to
unprecedented tunable optical materials.
Light has been the source of inspiration for artists and
scientists for millennia. Assyrians developed the first lenses to bend the
trajectory of light and the interaction of light with metals was exploited in
Mesopotamia and Egypt to create the first mirrors. In classical optics, lenses
and mirrors are used to focus light to small scales, but these do not allow the
observation of microscopic structures smaller than the wavelength of light, the
so-called "diffraction limit."1