Ultrafast all-optical switching via coherent modulation of metamaterial absorption

By Xu Fang, Ming Lun Tseng, J. Ou, Kevin F. MacDonald, Din Ping Tsai, Nikolay I. Zheludev. 2014

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We report on the demonstration of a femtosecond all-optical modulator providing, without nonlinearity and therefore at arbitrarily low intensity, ultrafast light-by-light control. The device engages the coherent interaction of optical waves on a metamaterial nanostructure only 30 nm thick to efficiently control absorption of near-infrared (750–1040 nm) femtosecond pulses, providing switching contrast ratios approaching 3:1 with a modulation bandwidth in excess of 2 THz. The functional paradigm illustrated here opens the path to a broad family of meta-devices for ultrafast optical data processing in coherent networks.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2acdc95c3b6ded7c4a509f00507ec195bad80ae3