Ultrafast all-optical switching via coherent modulation of metamaterial absorption

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 efficie...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Fang, Xu, Tseng, Ming Lun, Ou, Jun-Yu, MacDonald, Kevin F., Tsai, Din Ping, Zheludev, Nikolay I.
Other Authors: School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/104103
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/19551
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Description
Summary: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.