Fibre-optic metadevice for all-optical signal modulation based on coherent absorption

Abstract

Recently, coherent control of the optical response of thin films in standing waves has attracted considerable attention, ranging from applications in excitation-selective spectroscopy and nonlinear optics to all-optical image processing. Here, we show that integration of metamaterial and optical fibre technologies allows the use of coherently controlled absorption in a fully fiberized and packaged switching metadevice. With this metadevice, which controls light with light in a nanoscale plasmonic metamaterial film on an optical fibre tip, we provide proof-of-principle demonstrations of logical functions XOR, NOT and AND that are performed within a coherent fibre network at wavelengths between 1530 and 1565 nm. The metadevice has been tested at up to 40 gigabits per second and sub-milliwatt power levels. Since coherent absorption can operate at the single-photon level and with 100 THz bandwidth, we argue that the demonstrated all-optical switch concept has potential applications in coherent and quantum information networks.

Ultrashort low-loss Ψ gates for linear optical logic on Si photonics platform

“…Various platforms (e.g., plasmonics [9][10][11][12] , photonic crystals 13,14 , and metasurfaces [15][16][17] , etc.) are now available for forming Ψ gates.…”

“…Recently, there have been several proposals and some experimental demonstrations of optical logic operations employing linear optical components [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] . For example, a simple beam splitter can perform various types of approximate Boolean logic gates as a result of optical interference.…”

Picosecond all-optical switching and dark pulse generation in a fibre-optic network using a plasmonic metamaterial absorber

“…We have previously shown that coherent absorption and coherent transparency enable logic NOT, XOR and AND functions at up to 40 Gbit/s [27]. While we are not able to generate faster data signals, our results indicate that our fibre-optic interferometer with its metamaterial absorber could perform these functions at data rates as high as 1 Tbit/s.…”

“…It has enabled 11 fs dark pulse generation [24], polarization modulation, image processing and various logic functions in free space [25]. Recently, the concept was applied to demonstrate NOT, XOR and AND functions at up to 40 Gbit/s in a fibre-optic interferometer [27].…”

Controlling the Optical Response of 2D Matter in Standing Waves

“…The signal processing opportunities presented by coherent interaction of light with light on 2D matter in a four-port device as discussed above have been investigated in detail in a theoretical study by Fang et al 75 followed by recent experimental demonstrations [76][77][78] . They include transistor-like small-signal amplification as well as logical operations NOT, XOR, XNOR on phase-modulated data and NOT, XOR, AND, OR on intensitymodulated data, promising fast and low energy information processing in novel coherent data processing architectures and locally coherent networks that are becoming part of the mainstream telecommunications agenda.…”