Israel De Leon

Large optical nonlinearity of indium tin oxide in its epsilon-near-zero region.

Nonlinear optics: A surprise in store? At ultrafast data rates, the ability to use light to control things could speed information processing. However, photons tend not to interact with each other, and so a nonlinear optical material is needed and the response of such materials is typically weak. Alam et al. report a surprising finding: that indium tin oxide, a commercially available transparent conducting oxide widely used in microelectronics, exhibits a large nonlinear response. They used a wavelength regime where the permittivity of the material is close to zero and observed a large and fast nonlinear optical response. The finding offers the possibility that other, so far unexplored, materials may be out there for nonlinear optical applications. Science, this issue p. 795 Indium tin oxide is found to exhibit strong nonlinear optical functionality in a specific wavelength regime. Nonlinear optical phenomena are crucial for a broad range of applications, such as microscopy, all-optical data processing, and quantum information. However, materials usually exhibit a weak optical nonlinearity even under intense coherent illumination. We report that indium tin oxide can acquire an ultrafast and large intensity-dependent refractive index in the region of the spectrum where the real part of its permittivity vanishes. We observe a change in the real part of the refractive index of 0.72 ± 0.025, corresponding to 170% of the linear refractive index. This change in refractive index is reversible with a recovery time of about 360 femtoseconds. Our results offer the possibility of designing material structures with large ultrafast nonlinearity for applications in nanophotonics.

Optical spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion in ultra-thin metasurfaces with arbitrary topological charges

Orbital angular momentum associated with the helical phase-front of optical beams provides an unbounded “space” for both classical and quantum communications. Among the different approaches to generate and manipulate orbital angular momentum states of light, coupling between spin and orbital angular momentum allows a faster manipulation of orbital angular momentum states because it depends on manipulating the polarisation state of light, which is simpler and generally faster than manipulating conventional orbital angular momentum generators. In this work, we design and fabricate an ultra-thin spin-to-orbital angular momentum converter, based on plasmonic nano-antennas and operating in the visible wavelength range that is capable of converting spin to an arbitrary value of orbital angular momentum l. The nano-antennas are arranged in an array with a well-defined geometry in the transverse plane of the beam, possessing a specific integer or half-integer topological charge q. When a circularly polarised ligh...

Modeling surface plasmon-polariton gain in planar metallic structures

Amplification of the single-interface and long-range surface plasmon-polariton modes is studied in planar metallic structures incorporating gain media formed by Rhodamine 6G dye molecules in solution. We employ a theoretical model that accounts for the nonuniformity of the gain medium close to the metal surface due to position-dependent dipole lifetime and pump irradiance. The results of this model are used as a baseline for a comparative study against two simplified models: one neglects the position-dependent dipole lifetime while the other assumes a uniform gain medium. The discrepancies between the models are explained in terms of the mode overlap with the gain distribution near the metal. For the cases under analysis, the simplified models estimate the required pump irradiance with deviation factors that vary from 1.45 at the lossless conditions to 8 for gains near saturation. The relevance of describing properly the amount o gain interacting with the SPP mode and the role played by the dipole quantum efficiency are discussed.

Measurement of the complex nonlinear optical response of a surface plasmon-polariton

We observe experimentally the self-phase modulation of a surface plasmon-polariton (SPP) propagating along a gold film bounded by air in a Kretschmann-Raether configuration. Through analyzing the power dependence of the reflectance curve as a function of the incidence angle, we characterize the complex-valued nonlinear propagation coefficient of the SPP. Moreover, we present a procedure that can further extract the complex value of the third-order nonlinear susceptibility of gold from our experimental data. Our work provides direct insights into nonlinear control of SPPs utilizing the nonlinearity of metals, and serves as a practical method to measure the complex-valued third-order nonlinear susceptibility of metallic materials.

Chiral optical response of planar and symmetric nanotrimers enabled by heteromaterial selection

Chirality is an intriguing property of certain molecules, materials or artificial nanostructures, which allows them to interact with the spin angular momentum of the impinging light field. Due to their chiral geometry, they can distinguish between left- and right-hand circular polarization states or convert them into each other. Here we introduce an approach towards optical chirality, which is observed in individual two-dimensional and geometrically mirror-symmetric nanostructures. In this scheme, the chiral optical response is induced by the chosen heterogeneous material composition of a particle assembly and the corresponding resonance behaviour of the constituents it is built from, which breaks the symmetry of the system. As a proof of principle, we investigate such a structure composed of individual silicon and gold nanoparticles both experimentally, as well as numerically. Our proposed concept constitutes an approach for designing two-dimensional chiral media tailored at the nanoscale, allowing for high tunability of their optical response.

Strong, spectrally-tunable chirality in diffractive metasurfaces.

Metamaterials and metasurfaces provide a paradigm-changing approach for manipulating light. Their potential has been evinced by recent demonstrations of chiral responses much greater than those of natural materials. Here, we demonstrate theoretically and experimentally that the extrinsic chiral response of a metasurface can be dramatically enhanced by near-field diffraction effects. At the core of this phenomenon are lattice plasmon modes that respond selectively to the illumination’s polarization handedness. The metasurface exhibits sharp features in its circular dichroism spectra, which are tunable over a broad bandwidth by changing the illumination angle over a few degrees. Using this property, we demonstrate an ultra-thin circular-polarization sensitive spectral filter with a linewidth of ~10 nm, which can be dynamically tuned over a spectral range of 200 nm. Chiral diffractive metasurfaces, such as the one proposed here, open exciting possibilities for ultra-thin photonic devices with tunable, spin-controlled functionality.

Measuring gain and noise in active long-range surface plasmon-polariton waveguides

We describe techniques and an experimental setup to measure the gain and noise characteristics of a long-range surface plasmon-polariton amplifier consisting of a symmetric metallic stripe waveguide incorporating optically pumped dye molecules in the solution as the gain medium. The setup is capable of acquiring absolute power measurements at the amplifiers output over a narrow optical bandwidth. This allows independent characterization of the amplifiers gain via measurements of stimulated emission and via measurements of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) over a narrow optical bandwidth, both obtained during the same experimental run. In addition, the absolute power measurements of ASE quantify directly the amplifiers noise.

Polarization shaping for control of nonlinear propagation

We study the nonlinear optical propagation of two different classes of light beams with space-varying polarization-radially symmetric vector beams and Poincaré beams with lemon and star topologies-in a rubidium vapor cell. Unlike Laguerre-Gauss and other types of beams that quickly experience instabilities, we observe that their propagation is not marked by beam breakup while still exhibiting traits such as nonlinear confinement and self-focusing. Our results suggest that, by tailoring the spatial structure of the polarization, the effects of nonlinear propagation can be effectively controlled. These findings provide a novel approach to transport high-power light beams in nonlinear media with controllable distortions to their spatial structure and polarization properties.

Theory of noise in high-gain surface plasmon-polariton amplifiers incorporating dipolar gain media

A theoretical analysis of noise in high-gain surface plasmon-polariton amplifiers incorporating dipolar gain media is presented. An expression for the noise figure is obtained in terms of the spontaneous emission rate into the amplified surface plasmon-polariton taking into account the different energy decay channels experienced by dipoles in close proximity to the metallic surface. Two amplifier structures are examined: a single-interface between a metal and a gain medium and a thin metal film bounded by identical gain media on both sides. A realistic configuration is considered where the surface plasmon-polariton undergoing amplification has a Gaussian field profile in the plane of the metal and paraxial propagation along the amplifiers length. The noise figure of these plasmonic amplifiers is studied considering three prototypical gain media with different permittivities. It is shown that the noise figure exhibits a strong dependance on the real part of the permittivities of the metal and gain medium, and that its minimum value is 4/π(∼3.53 dB). The origin of this minimum value is discussed. It is also shown that amplifier configurations supporting strongly confined surface plasmon-polaritons suffer from a large noise figure, which follows from an enhanced spontaneous emission rate due to the Purcell effect.

Exotic looped trajectories of photons in three-slit interference

The validity of the superposition principle and of Borns rule are well-accepted tenants of quantum mechanics. Surprisingly, it has been predicted that the intensity pattern formed in a three-slit experiment is seemingly in contradiction with the most conventional form of the superposition principle when exotic looped trajectories are taken into account. However, the probability of observing such paths is typically very small, thus rendering them extremely difficult to measure. Here we confirm the validity of Borns rule and present the first experimental observation of exotic trajectories as additional paths for the light by directly measuring their contribution to the formation of optical interference fringes. We accomplish this by enhancing the electromagnetic near-fields in the vicinity of the slits through the excitation of surface plasmons. This process increases the probability of occurrence of these exotic trajectories, demonstrating that they are related to the near-field component of the photons wavefunction.