English

Ultrafast all-optical switching via coherent modulation of metamaterial absorption

Optics 2014-04-14 v2

Abstract

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 family of novel meta-devices for ultra-fast optical data processing in coherent networks.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1403.2107,
  title  = {Ultrafast all-optical switching via coherent modulation of metamaterial absorption},
  author = {Xu Fang and Ming Lun Tseng and Jun-Yu Ou and Kevin F. MacDonald and Din Ping Tsai and Nikolay I. Zheludev},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.2107},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

5 pages, 4 figures