Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Switching of light polarization on the sub-picosecond timescale is a crucial functionality for applications in a variety of contexts, including telecommunications, biology and chemistry. The ability to control polarization at ultrafast speed would pave the way for the development of unprecedented free-space optical links and of novel techniques for probing dynamical processes in complex systems, as chiral molecules. Such high switching speeds can only be reached with an all-optical paradigm, i.e., engineering active platforms capable of controlling light polarization via ultrashort laser pulses. Here we demonstrate giant modulation of dichroism and birefringence in an all-dielectric metasurface, achieved at low fluences of the optical control beam. This performance, which leverages the many degrees of freedom offered by all-dielectric active metasurfaces, is obtained by combining a high-quality factor nonlocal resonance with the giant third-order optical nonlinearity dictated by photogenerated hot carriers at the semiconductor band edge.
Source: Light Science & Applications
Institutions: Italian Institute of Technology, Politecnico di Milano, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université Paris Cité, Laboratoire Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques, Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski", Australian National University, ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ningbo Institute of Industrial Technology, Istituto di Fotonica e Nanotecnologie, National Research Council, Université Paris-Saclay, Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies, Institut Universitaire de France
Language: English
Field: Materials Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $4,190
OpenAlex ID: W4401801562