Broadband optical and microwave nonlinear response in topological insulator

By Shuqing Chen, Chujun Zhao, Ying Li, Huihui Huang, Shunbin Lu, Han Zhang, Shuangchun Wen. 2014

186 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We experimentally studied the nonlinear response of topological insulator (TI): Bi2Te3 at both the optical and microwave band, and found that the absorbance of topological insulator decreases with the increase of the incident power and reaches at a constant value once the incident power exceeds a threshold. By the open-aperture Z-scan and balanced twin detector measurement techniques, the optical saturable absorption property of TI: Bi2Te3 from 800 nm to 1550 nm was experimentally demonstrated. Based on a power dependent microwave transmittance experimental setup, TI: Bi2Te3 was also identified to show a saturation intensity of ~12 μW/cm2 and a normalized modulation depth of ~70%. We argue that the optical (resp. microwave) saturable absorption in topological insulator is a natural consequence of the Pauli-blocking principle of the electrons filled in the bulk insulating state (resp. surface metallic state). Our experimental results illustrate the potential photonic applications of TI: Bi2Te3 at both the optical and microwave band.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b0972151878a85d4cd762dcad76e7a969acd33c4

Citations in the corpus

• Self-induced topological transitions and edge states supported by nonlinear staggered potentials (2015, unknown): “While some preliminary studies of nonlinear effects in topological systems have been recently presented [25]-[27], the question of whether nonlinearities may induce topological order, and how the temporal dynamics of this process take place as a function of excitation, remains to a large extent unan”