Chalcogenide phase-change materials are showing promise for the development of non-volatile memory and neuro-inspired computing technologies. One of the key issues in these devices is the energy consumption for the write (crystallization) and erase (amorphization) process. In this work, we propose to combine a PCM with a subwavelength chain of silicon nanoantennas with variable sizes following a parabolic profile. In comparison with a common slab waveguide, it was numerically demonstrated that the nanoparticle chain requires 24 times less energy for the writing and 42 times less energy for erasing process due to slow- light behavior near the photonic band-gap edge, which enhances local electromagnetic fields in the structure. Achieved results could be used for neuromorphic silicon photonics applications.
It is known that metasurfaces – two-dimensional structures consisted of periodically spaced nanoresonators of various shapes – can be used for spatial filtering of light, particularly for image processing applications. In this work, spatial Fourier filtering based on semiconductor metasurfaces is proposed to implement complex analog operations on the optical signal. We design, create and test a metasurface composed of silicon nanodisks implementing the convolution of an arbitrary image with a reference one. An ultrafast tunable Fourier filtering based on the gallium arsenide metasurface under femtosecond optical pumping is also proposed. The results of this study can be used to create a compact and lightweight optical devices for image processing applications.
Effective control of electromagnetic radiation in the optical range is one of the key challenges in modern photonics. Recently, there has been a lot of research in the field of metamaterials – artificial subwavelength structures with specific optical properties defined by their geometry. It has been shown that such structures offer wide opportunities to manipulate light at the nanoscale. However, the fabrication of such structures is a technically challenging task. On the other hand, their 2d analogous - metasurfaces - based mainly on dielectric and semiconductor materials, are of greater interest due to the CMOS-compatibility and lower energy losses compared to their plasmonic counterparts. Recent research has shown the ability of metasurfaces to control the phase and amplitude of light waves on-demand with high efficiency, which paves the way for the creation of ultrathin elements such as metalenses, holograms and beam-shapers. They also can be used for optical analogue computing and processing of optical signals in real-time (such as differentiation, integration or convolution).
These numerical studies allowed to demonstrate the result of the convolution of two images and obtain bright correlation peaks in the regions where the reference image was located in the analyzed one. Based on the achieved numerical results the sample of the silicon metasurface on a glass substrate was made by electron beam lithography and reactive ion etching techniques. Using this sample, a set of experimental tests was carried out to validate our numerical model. Achieved results can pave the way for the realization of new devices for analogue optical image processing based on CMOS-compatible metasurfaces.
Active devices and nanoantennas are promising research area of nanophotonics. They can be used to build high-speed elements, optical switches, and sensors. The ultrafast all-optical switches can be represented as semiconductor metasurfaces and nanoantennas, which scattering properties are controlled using femtosecond laser pulses in the pump-probe technique. In this work, the ultrafast dynamics of the light scattering is experimentally investigated for phased arrays of asymmetric sub-wavelength GaAs super-cells consisting of resonators of the various sizes. Energy reallocation of the incident radiation into the different diffraction orders, controlled by the design of the metasurface, was obtained. This effect appears only for the resonant polarization for the structure, as well as at wavelengths close to the optimized value of 800-815 nm. Such energy reallocation is a sign of the phase-manipulation behavior of the metasurface. GaAs metasurfaces are studied by Fourier plane imaging microscopy, in which pump and probe signals of different diffraction orders can be measured independently. The transmission coefficient modulation ∆𝑇⁄𝑇 of the probe pulse in the first diffraction order is shown to be ~15% at a pump fluence of 0.02 μJ/cm^2. The femtosecond relaxation time of free carriers in the GaAs metasurface is ~150 fs. These properties indicate that asymmetric GaAs nanoantennas can be used as all-optical switches.
All-dielectric nanoparticles clusters have been attracted the attention recently due to their ability to sustain the specific collective modes excitation leading to new interesting effects such as Fano resonances. However, it is difficult to recognize such modes in the linear optical response of the structure without detecting the near field profile directly. In this work we propose a new method for detection of the oligomer eigenmodes excitation and numerically proof it for the nanoparticles cluster in the form of a trimer. These modes are indistinguishable in the linear optical response of the structure, but manifest themselves in the nonlinear response such as third- harmonic generation dependence on the pump polarization orientation. We belief that our method can be used for experimental identification of the eigenmodes of the complex all-dielectric structures such as oligomers of all-dielectric nanoparticles.
The concept of the rapidly developing area of high-index resonant meta-optics is extended to the field of mag- netically active materials. We numerically analyze magneto-optical response of hybrid nickel-silicon (Ni/Si) nanoantennas in comparison with an all-dielectric analog based on the bismuth substituted iron yttrium garnet- silicon (Bi:YIG/Si) nanoantennas. The results demonstrate the multifold enhancement of the magneto-optical effects due to the Mie-type resonances excitation in the structure. To further optimize the magneto-optical re- sponse and achieve a significant enhancement of the effect, the metasurfaces composed of Ni/Si nanoantennas of the different shape and configuration are numerically simulated. The magneto-optical effects can be significantly enhanced by means of the specific design of these hybrid metasurfaces.
The study of nonlinear effects with high-index dielectric nanoparticles is emerging as a promising alternative to plasmonic systems usually utilized for nonlinear nanophotonics, due to negligible Ohmic losses and low heating in combination with multipolar radiation characteristics of both electric and magnetic nature. In this contribution, we discussed novel nonlinear-optical effects, such as enhanced second- and third-harmonic generation in silicon nanodisks excited in the spectral range close to the magnetic dipole resonance of the individual disk. Each of the nanodisks exhibits both electric and magnetic Mie-type resonances that are shown to affect significantly their nonlinear response. We have observed the third- harmonic radiation intensity that is comparable to that of a bulk silicon slab and demonstrated a pronounced reshaping of the third-harmonic spectra due to interference of the nonlinearly generated waves augmented by an interplay between the electric and the magnetic dipolar resonances. We have also demonstrated all-optical switching of femtosecond laser pulses passing through subwavelength silicon nanodisks at their magnetic dipolar resonance. In z-scan experiments, we have observed a modulation of up to 60% and a spectral resonance shift of 6 nm when pumping the nanostructure at picojoule-per-disk powers. Third-harmonic generation from silicon nanodisks arranged in the form of quadrumers or trimer oligomers with varying distance between the nanoparticles is studied.
Two series of nanodisk arrays were designed. The first one was fabricated out of a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer using electron-beam lithography and a reactive-ion etching process. The top layer of a SOI wafer is a 260-nm layer of monocrystalline (100)-cut silicon. We consider three square 400x400 μm2 arrays distinguished by the disk diameter values – 340, 345 and 360 nm, respectively; the period of the nanodisk ordering in the array amounted to 2.85 μm – this value allows for regarding the disks as isolated ones in terms of optical coupling. The nanodisk diameter choice specifies the magnetic dipolar (MD) resonance wavelength [1]. The second series of arrays was made of a 130-nm hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) film grown by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition on a thin glass substrate.
In order to study the nonlinear optical response of the nanodisks and verify the multipole resonances roles, we conducted third-harmonic generation (THG) spectroscopy measurements using a tunable (1.0-1.5 μm) optical parametric oscillator (200 fs pulses with the repetition rate of 76 MHz) pumped by a Ti:Sapphire laser. The laser beam waist diameter was set at 11 μm by an aspheric lens. The full thickness of both the SOI and glass wafers (∼500 μm each) was less than the waist depth. The resulting peak intensity reached the values of about 1 GW/cm2 in the sample plane. The laser beam polarization was linear as controlled by a Glan-Taylor laser prism. The transmitted and collimated THG signal was selected by a set of blue filters and detected by a photomultiplier tube connected with a lock-in amplifier. This signal was proven to be of TH origin by checking its cubic dependence on the pump power and by direct measurements of its spectrum. It was also verified that the THG beam was polarized parallel to the orientation of the pump beam polarization. It should be pointed out that the penetration depth of the THG into silicon does not exceed the nanodisk height.
The experimental technique [2] of nonlinear spectroscopy consists of defining the ratio of the TH signal from the nanostructured area to the successively measured signal from the nearby area where the top layer of silicon was etched away (in the case of the SOI wafer) or to the signal from a reference channel (in the case of the a-Si:H film). These ratios reveal the enhanced third-order optical response; moreover, the dispersion of the silicon nonlinear susceptibility is thereby taken into account. The resultant normalized THG signal represents the nanodisks and their resonant contribution.
In this contribution, we have shown the third-harmonic response of silicon nanodisks at their electric and magnetic dipolar resonances. The enhanced up-conversion efficiency at the MD resonance of the nanodisks is observed, whereas the electric dipolar resonance yields less nonlinear conversion. The maximum area-normalized THG enhancement is around 30. In this work, the observed linear and nonlinear spectra are confirmed by numerical calculations.
[1] I. Staude, et al., ACS Nano, 7, 7824 (2013).
[2] M.R. Shcherbakov, et al., Nano Lett., 14, 6488 (2014).
Conventionally, all-optical switching devices made out from bulk silicon and other semiconductors are limited by free-carrier relaxation time which spans from picoseconds to microseconds. In this work, we discuss the possibility to suppress the undesired long free-carrier relaxation in subwavelength dielectric nanostructures exhibiting localized magnetic Mie resonances. Numerical calculations show the unsymmetrical modification of the transmittance spectra of the nanodisks due the free carriers photo-injection. Such a spectral dependance allows to control temporal response of the nanostructure by varying the laser pulse spectum.
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