Angelos Xomalis

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

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.Here, the authors show that integration of metamaterial and optical fibre technologies enables all-optical XOR, NOT and AND logical functions that are performed at up to 40 gigabits per second with few femtojoules per bit energy consumption within a coherent fully fiberized network.

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

Coherent interaction of two light waves on a film of subwavelength thickness provides remarkable opportunities for controlling intensity and polarization of light beams as well as all-optical image processing. Here, we show that such interactions can be used for optical dark pulse generation and basic all-optical signal processing in fully fiberized coherent information networks with 1 THz bandwidth. With an encapsulated plasmonic metamaterial absorber operating in the telecommunications C-band, we demonstrate switching and dark pulse generation with 1 ps laser pulses.Coherent interaction of two light waves on a film of subwavelength thickness provides remarkable opportunities for controlling intensity and polarization of light beams as well as all-optical image processing. Here, we show that such interactions can be used for optical dark pulse generation and basic all-optical signal processing in fully fiberized coherent information networks with 1 THz bandwidth. With an encapsulated plasmonic metamaterial absorber operating in the telecommunications C-band, we demonstrate switching and dark pulse generation with 1 ps laser pulses.

Dissipative optical switch for coherent fibre networks with 100 THz bandwidth

We provide the first demonstration of a high-bandwidth, low-intensity fiberized all-optical gate exploiting coherent absorption in a plasmonic metamaterial film. The fully packaged fiberized version of the switch has been tested to the bandwidth of 1 GHz while free-space versions of the gate have been shown to provide 100 THz bandwidth and to operate at arbitrarily low intensities. Our work illustrates how major bandwidth and energy challenges of optical telecommunications and information processing networks can be tackled by merging metamaterials and optical fibre technologies.