Vol 30 No 6

Asian

Journal of Physics

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Volume 30 No 6 June 2021

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A Special Issue Dedicated
to
Prof D Narayana Rao

Guest Edited By : G Vijaya Prakash, B Maruthi Manoj & Shivakiran Bhaktha B N

Anita Publications
FF-43, 1st Floor, Mangal Bazar, Laxmi Nagar, Delhi-110 092, India

Prof D Narayana Rao was born on May 1, 1949 at Anantapur District of Andhra Pradesh, India. He obtained all his elementary, high school, graduation and post-graduation from his native place before moving to IIT Kanpur for his Ph D studies. His Master’s degree (1971) was in Physics completed at S. V. University Post Graduate Centre (now known as Sri Krishnadevaraya University). Doctoral work was on spectroscopic studies on rare-earth doped single crystals. After completion of his Ph. D work (1978), he spent a year at IIT Delhi Physics Department as a Research Associate and moved back to IIT Kanpur as a Scientific Officer in Laser Labs. In 1982 he moved to State University of New York at Buffalo as a Visiting Scientist and spent next eight years at different institutions in USA (Research Scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA, University of Massachusetts at Boston, University of Massachusetts at Lowell). He joined as a Reader at University of Hyderabad in 1990 and became a full Professor in 1998. He had many years of collaboration with University of Trento, Italy. After retirement in 2014, he became UGC BSR Faculty Fellow, then he was awarded the DAE Raja Ramanna Fellowship. Currently he is an Emeritus Professor at School of Physics, University of Hyderabad. His current research interests are in nonlinear optics, excited state dynamics, laser direct writing, surface structure modifications through laser irradiation, 2D IR and Optical spectroscopies and fluorescence spectroscopy, 1D and 3D photonic crystals.
Academic and Research Achievements: Prof. Narayana Rao was involved in the development of MW and mm wave spectroscopy, CO2, FIR, ps and fs laser systems, study of ultrafast dynamics of excited states, transient grating spectroscopy, waveguide CARS that can achieve mono-layer sensitivity, spectral diffusion studies in organic solids, measurement of the second and third order susceptibilities through EFISHG, SHG, FWM, Z-scan, electro-absorption, Surface enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS), green synthesis of metal nanoparticles and their medical applications, optical limiting, etc. He studied ultrafast phenomena in the fs time scales using a ns laser, through what is known as incoherent laser spectroscopy. He demonstrated Pancharatnam phase through a very simple experiment. He demonstrated anti-Stokes emission at 570 nm with 633 nm He-Ne laser. His recent studies on spectral shift through interferometry demonstrates its utility for the measurement of displacements as small as few nm. He has made an excellent progress in the area of optical limiting, where the limiter transmits linearly in the low intensity regime but limits to a threshold at high intensities. His studies on local fields throw light on real and virtual cavities appearing in the literature. Recent studies also include super continuum generation, subsurface 700 nm waveguide channel preparations in glasses and polymers. In addition to the development of research labs at University of Hyderabad, he developed a very good Laser Physics teaching lab for the Master’s students.
He published over 300 research papers in peer-reviewed international journals and guided 22 PhD students. Many students from other institutions completed their Ph D work from his lab. Completed 20 DST, DAE, ISRO, CSIR and DRDO projects. Has a citation index of 7150, h index of 44, and i10 index of 143 as on 2020. He was an invited speaker at many national and international seminars. He is a reviewer for most of the optics Journals, was Director of SERC School on Nonlinear Optics, Convenor of National Laser Symposium and International Conference on Photonics. He has a Patent: All optical devices, US patent no. 5,757,525
He was awarded senior NRC Fellowship (USA). He is a senior Life Member of Optical Society of America, Life Member Optical Society of India, Life Member Indian Laser Association, Fellow of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh Academies of Science, Elected president of Indian Laser Association, served as Editorial Board member of Pramana, Journal Frontiers in Physics: Optics and Photonics. He served as a Member of the DST - PAC, FIST, Fast Track, CRG, NPDF and Early Career schemes for more than 25 years.

G Vijaya Prakash
Prof G Vijaya Prakash has been in the intense research of nanophotonics and photonic technologies for more than two decades. His enthusiastic initiative in developing collaborations across the world and passion on research enabled him to explore a diverse range of research topics. His scholarly work is evidenced by more than 180 scientific journal publications and his research has been demonstrated in many major international conference talks/presentations. So far he has guided/guiding 25 Ph Ds and guided more than 40 post graduate students. He holds research grants of more than 06 Crs, as PI and ~Rs.60Cr as Co-PI from reputed Indian and abroad funding agencies. He is recipient of prestigious research awards from Italy (INFM), UK (Royal Society, UKIERI) and from India (High Impact research of IIT Delhi). He has been a visiting professor/faculty to University of Cambridge (UK) and University of Southampton (UK) from the past 15 years. He delivered many invited talks in India and abroad (UK, Italy, Singapore, Spain, France and Egypt).
Currently he is serving as a Institute Chair Professor and group leader of nanophotonics research labs at IIT Delhi and holds several administrative responsibilities such as Professor in-charge of academic facilities and institute time-table in-charge.
Further details can be found from Website: http://nanophotonics.iitd.ac.in/
IITD profile http://iitd.irins.org/profile/70731
ORCID : https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0450-3767

Dr. B Maruthi Manoj obtained his Ph D in Physics from the University of Hyderabad. He did his post-doctoral research from the University of Electro-Communications, Japan. He joined as Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics, IIT Kharagpur in 2013. He received DST-Inspire Faculty Award in 2013. His current research interests are in Singular Optics, Correlation Optics, Spectral Interferometry and Optical Holography.
Website: http://www.iitkgp.ac.in/department/PH/faculty/ph-bmmanoj
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0442-3599

Dr Shivakiran Bhaktha B N received his Masters of Science (Physics) from Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, Prasanthi Nilayam, India in 2003 and Ph D. from the School of Physics, University of Hyderabad, India in 2006. As a part of his post-doctoral fellowship he has visited various laboratories: Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille, France, CNR-IFN, CSMFO Lab., Trento, Italy, LPMC-CNRS, Nice, France and TIFR, Mumbai, India. His areas of interest include waves in random media, glass photonics, glass-ceramics, photonic crystals, microresonators and optofluidics. He joined the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India in 2011 and is currently serving as an Associate Professor. More details can be found on:
Website: http://iitkgp.ac.in/department/PH/faculty/ph-kiranbhaktha
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4846-8262

It gives me great pleasure to express my admiration and share Prof. D. Narayana Rao’s scientific contributions to the field of laser spectroscopy and nonlinear optics. I had a chance to know him in 1988 when he joined my group as a CSIR Pool Officer. He took very active interest in establishing a Holography lab and introduced several experiments for the M Sc students. At that time, I was looking for a scientist who could develop experimental laboratories in laser spectroscopy. Narayana had the right background, having being trained in some of the best laboratories in India and USA. Thus, we decided to hire him for the middle level faculty position and provided funding for starting research laboratory.
He came to me in search of a position in India after working for many years in Prof. Paras N. Prasad’s lab at State University of New York at Buffalo, NY, USA. He did his Ph D under the guidance of Prof. Ramachandra Rao Dasari, and the well-known scientist Professor, P. Venkateswarlu. His Ph D work was on “Site selective fluorescence spectroscopy from the rare-earth doped calcium fluoride crystals”. From his resume, I came to know that he joined the IIT Kanpur in the year 1971 after completing Master’s Degree from Sri Venkateswara University Post Graduate Centre at Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh. At IIT Kanpur he developed experimental skills on microwave spectroscopy of different organic gases, MW-Infrared double resonance to derive the absorption coefficients, distortion constants, harmonic generators to reach up to 54 GHz, Rare-earth doped crystal growth, development of CO2 laser, etc. After completion of his Ph D in 1978, he worked as a Research Associate under the joint guidance of Profs. K. P. Jain, S. C. Abbi and S. Chopra to develop the Raman Spectroscopy lab using an Ar+ laser in the Department of Physics, IIT Delhi. After working for a year there, he returned to IIT Kanpur as a scientific officer to assist Prof. Putcha Venkateswarlu. In 1981, he was offered a post-doctoral position in the Photonics Laboratory, State University of New York at Buffalo, USA under Prof Paras N. Prasad. He told me that quite a lot of development responsibility fell on him as he was from physics background and with good amount of instrumentation experience. His first publication was on the development of mixed gas FIR laser excited by CO2 laser, a region which is now popular with the name of THz. He went on working on ns Nd:YAG, ps ML and QS Nd:YAG laser, fs lasers staring from 300 fs to 60 fs dye laser at SUNYAB, USA. He started working on nonlinear optics problems such as: Transient grating spectroscopy, Coherent anti-Stokes Raman, CSRS, waveguide CARS, diffused reflectivity with FIR lasers, spectral diffusion in organic solids at supercooled liquid He temperatures.
After joining University of Hyderabad, he developed a strong collaboration with Dr. Dasari and Prof. M. Feld of MIT, Prof. D. Gopal Rao at UMASS, Boston, USA and University of Trento, Italy. It is quite amazing that he could produce nearly twenty-two Ph D scholars from this lab, which was an empty hall in 1991. He interacted with many scientists at University of Hyderabad and other institutions; to name a few Prof. Bhaskar Maiya, Prof. T. P. Radhakrishnan, Prof. Chandrasekher from Chemistry, Prof. Reddanna from Life Sciences. Nearly a dozen students from other departments and institutions have completed their Ph D work from his lab. Most of his students have settled as faculty members at different institutions in India and abroad.
He helped Prof. Tewari in establishing the ACRHEM in the initial stages. Three of his students are now professors in ACRHEM working on laser applications to high energy materials. He was quite dynamic in writing proposals to different funding agencies and received nearly 18 projects during a period of 25 years as a faculty in the School of Physics, University of Hyderabad. He also had three major projects with Trento University, Italy and one project with Australian National University as collaborative study in the area of nonlinear optics.
He worked on several area of spectroscopy and nonlinear optics: Microwave spectroscopy, Development of lasers, Fluorescence spectroscopy, crystal growth, Wolf shift, Spectral Interferometry, Incoherent Laser Spectroscopy, Studies on Local Fields, Ultrafast Dynamics, Transient Grating Spectroscopy, Coherent Anti- Stokes Raman Spectroscopy, Nonlinear Spectroscopy, Four Wave Mixing, Z-scan, 1D and 3D Photonic Crystals, Nanoplasmonics, Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy, Supercontinuum Generation, Laser Ablation, Green Synthesis of Nanoparticles, and Laser Direct Writing.
In the initial stages I asked him to work on our theoretical predictions on spectral interferometry and Wolf shifts-he did do it successfully and produced a sensitive method of measuring refractive index. Given his expertise on rare earth halides, I asked him to prepare materials where refractive index could be controlled so that one test different models of local fields in dense media. He did such a study successfully which was published in Physical Review Letters.
He is close to three hundred refereed publications in international journals and presented an equal number in international conferences. He received NRC (USA) Fellowship, UGC-BSR Faculty Fellowship and DAE Raja Ramanna Fellowship. He is a Fellow of Academies of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. As an Emeritus Professor, he is working on Antireflecting surfaces, Superhydrophobic surfaces, 1D and 2D Photonic crystal structures.
I have felt a great deal of satisfaction that I made the right choice in hiring him and entrusting him with the responsibility of developing modern laser spectroscopy. It must be added that in nineties, his lab became one of the few labs in India devoted to modern laser spectroscopy. I wish him all success in life.

G S Agarwal
Mitchell Physics Building IQSE 574, 4242 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-4242
girish.agarwal@tamu.edu
April 19,2021, Monday.

ASIAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICS