Nonlinear control of coherent absorption and its optical signal processing applications

Abstract

All-optical data processing continues to attract significant interest as a way to overcome the electronic signal processing bottleneck of fibre telecommunication networks. Nonlinear optical devices such as limiters and saturable absorbers rely on intensity-dependent attenuation of light. However, making such devices using intensity-dependent multi-photon dissipation processes is an issue as these make complete absorption and transmission impossible. Here we show that nonlinear phase retardation in an optical fibre can control the dissipation of coherent light waves interacting on a thin plasmonic absorber from total absorption to perfect transmission. The fibre’s instantaneous Kerr nonlinearity and the femtosecond coherent absorption timescale make this approach ultrafast. We report proof-of-principle demonstrations of all-optical intensity discrimination, power limiting, pulse restoration, pulse splitting and signal transfer between carrier wavelengths within a fibre circuit. Our results indicate that nonlinear control of coherent absorption can imitate and outperform saturable and multi-photon absorption in terms of bandwidth and contrast.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Angelos Xomalis: orcid.org/0000-0001-8406-9571

ORCID for Yongmin Jung: orcid.org/0000-0002-9054-4372

ORCID for Iosif Demirtzioglou: orcid.org/0000-0003-3048-1768

ORCID for Cosimo Lacava: orcid.org/0000-0002-9950-8642

ORCID for Eric Plum: orcid.org/0000-0002-1552-1840

ORCID for David Richardson: orcid.org/0000-0002-7751-1058

ORCID for Periklis Petropoulos: orcid.org/0000-0002-1576-8034

ORCID for Nikolai Zheludev: orcid.org/0000-0002-1013-6636

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