Direct Conversion of Free Space Millimeter Waves to Optical Domain by Plasmonic Modulator Antenna

Salamin, Yannick; Heni, Wolfgang; Haffner, Christian; Fedoryshyn, Yuriy; Hoessbacher, Claudia; Bonjour, Romain; Zahner, Marco; Hillerkuss, D.; Leuchtmann, P.; Elder, Delwin L.; Dalton, Larry R.; Hafner, Christian; Leuthold, Juerg

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b04025

Cited by 92 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 24 publications

(54 reference statements)

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“…However, here low insertion loss is achieved at the cost of large footprint. To reduce the length, one can exploit two complimentary strategies of increasing the applied electric field by using the plasmonic modes with sub-wavelength confinement [30,31] or using materials in which a large index change can be attained by using plasma dispersion. Both strategies result in increased insertion loss, but in many on-chip applications it can be tolerated as the necessary price to pay for the reduced footprint.…”

Section: Recent Advances and Developmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The index tuning-to-loss ratio is therefore a fundamental figure of merit (FOM) for phase shifting modulators and gets progressively worse near the resonance. Hence, most EOMs such as LiNbO 3 and polymers operate far from the resonance and naturally require long propagation lengths to incur sufficient (π) phase change [30,31]. Furthermore, EOMs, as opposed to EAMs, always require some form of interferometric scheme [Mach-Zehnder (MZ), ring, etc] to convert phase into amplitude modulation further increasing their footprint.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Active material, optical mode and cavity impact on nanoscale electro-optic modulation performance

Amin

Suer

et al. 2017

Nanophotonics

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Electro-optic modulation is a key function in optical data communication and possible future optical compute engines. The performance of modulators intricately depends on the interaction between the actively modulated material and the propagating waveguide mode. While a variety of high-performance modulators have been demonstrated, no comprehensive picture of what factors are most responsible for high performance has emerged so far. Here we report the first systematic and comprehensive analytical and computational investigation for high-performance compact on-chip electro-optic modulators by considering emerging active materials, model considerations and cavity feedback at the nanoscale. We discover that the delicate interplay between the material characteristics and the optical mode properties plays a key role in defining the modulator performance. Based on physical tradeoffs between index modulation, loss, optical confinement factors and slowlight effects, we find that there exist combinations of bias, material and optical mode that yield efficient phase or amplitude modulation with acceptable insertion loss. Furthermore, we show how material properties in the epsilon near zero regime enable reduction of length by as much as by 15 times. Lastly, we introduce and apply a cavity-based electro-optic modulator figure of merit, Δλ/Δα, relating obtainable resonance tuning via phase shifting relative to the incurred losses due to the fundamental KramersKronig relations suggesting optimized device operating regions with optimized modulation-to-loss tradeoffs. This work paves the way for a holistic design rule of electrooptic modulators for high-density on-chip integration.

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Section: Recent Advances and Developmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Active material, optical mode and cavity impact on nanoscale electro-optic modulation performance

Amin

Suer

et al. 2017

Nanophotonics

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“…Recently, a bowtie antenna coupled plasmonic electromagnetic wave sensor is theoretically proposed [39] and then experimentally demonstrated on a SOI substrate [40,41]; however, the silicon substrate introduces high RF loss and weaken its electric field enhancement ability. Making the device on a silicon-on-glass substrate or a silicon-on-sapphire substrate and then using our optimized bowtie antenna in this work can provide a solution to address this problem and thus improve the sensitivity of the device.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrated Broadband Bowtie Antenna on Transparent Silica Substrate

Zhang

Chung

Wang

et al. 2016

Antennas Wirel. Propag. Lett.

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Abstract-The bowtie antenna is a topic of growing interest in recent years. In this paper, we design, fabricate, and characterize a modified gold bowtie antenna integrated on a transparent silica substrate. The bowtie antenna is designed with broad RF bandwidth to cover the X-band in the electromagnetic spectrum. We numerically investigate the antenna characteristics, specifically its resonant frequency and enhancement factor. Our designed bowtie antenna provides a strong broadband electric field enhancement in its feed gap. Taking advantage of the low-k silica substrate, high enhancement factor can be achieved without the unwanted reflection and scattering from the backside silicon handle which is the issue of using an SOI substrate. We simulate the dependence of resonance frequency on bowtie geometry, and verify the simulation results through experimental investigation, by fabricating different sets of bowtie antennas on silica substrates and then measuring their resonance frequencies. In addition, the farfield radiation pattern of the bowtie antenna is measured, and it shows dipole-like characteristics with large beam width. Such a broadband antenna will be useful for a myriad of applications, ranging from photonic electromagnetic wave sensing to wireless communications.

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“…Tuning the geometry rather than the refractive index can reduce the difficulty in the experimental realization of such structures. Among different plasmonic waveguide structures, MDM plasmonic waveguides are of particular interest [108][109][110][111][112][113][114][115][116], because they support modes with deep subwavelength scale over a very wide range of frequencies extending from DC to visible [117] and are relatively easy to fabricate [118,119]. The waveguide widths w, w 1 , and w 2 are set to be 50, 20, and 100 nm, respectively ( Figure 9A).…”

Section: ) Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Unidirectional reflectionless light propagation at exceptional points

et al. 2017

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Abstract:In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of unidirectional reflectionless light propagation in photonic devices at exceptional points (EPs). EPs, which are branch point singularities of the spectrum, associated with the coalescence of both eigenvalues and corresponding eigenstates, lead to interesting phenomena, such as level repulsion and crossing, bifurcation, chaos, and phase transitions in open quantum systems described by non-Hermitian Hamiltonians. Recently, it was shown that judiciously designed photonic synthetic matters could mimic the complex non-Hermitian Hamiltonians in quantum mechanics and realize unidirectional reflection at optical EPs. Unidirectional reflectionlessness is of great interest for optical invisibility. Achieving unidirectional reflectionless light propagation could also be potentially important for developing optical devices, such as optical network analyzers. Here, we discuss unidirectional reflectionlessness at EPs in both parity-time (PT)-symmetric and non-PT-symmetric optical systems. We also provide an outlook on possible future directions in this field.

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Direct Conversion of Free Space Millimeter Waves to Optical Domain by Plasmonic Modulator Antenna

Cited by 92 publications

References 24 publications

Active material, optical mode and cavity impact on nanoscale electro-optic modulation performance

Active material, optical mode and cavity impact on nanoscale electro-optic modulation performance

Integrated Broadband Bowtie Antenna on Transparent Silica Substrate

Unidirectional reflectionless light propagation at exceptional points

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