Giant ultrafast dichroism and birefringence with active nonlocal metasurfaces
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.
Authors
- Ivan Buchvarov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7856-4741)
- Vincent Vinel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7041-8697)
- P. Laporta (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2673-6983)
- Giulia Crotti (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3976-9880)
- Mert Akturk (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6920-2565)
- Remo Proietti Zaccaria (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4951-7161)
- Giuseppe Leo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6525-6734)
- Andrea Schirato (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8024-9778)
- Giulio Cerullo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9534-2702)
- Giuseppe Della Valle (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0117-2683)
- Anton Trifonov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1640-4849)
- Dragomir N. Neshev (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4508-8646)
- A. Lemaı̂tre (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1892-9726)
- Margherita Maiuri
Institutions
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Institut Universitaire de France (FR)
- Université Paris Cité (FR)
- Université Paris-Saclay (FR)
- Italian Institute of Technology (IT)
- Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies (FR)
- Laboratoire Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques (FR)
- Istituto di Fotonica e Nanotecnologie (IT)
- ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (AU)
- Ningbo Institute of Industrial Technology (CN)
- Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" (BG)
- Politecnico di Milano (IT)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Light Science & Applications
- Published
- 2024-08-23
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-024-01545-8
- Citations
- 15
- Primary Topic
- Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.77
Funders
- European Commission