All-optical active plasmonic devices with memory and power switching functionalities based on epsilon-near-zero nonlinear metamaterials

Abstract

All-optical active plasmonic devices are of fundamental importance for designing efficient nanophotonic circuits. We theoretically propose and numerically investigate an active plasmonic device made up of a nonlinear epsilon-near-zero metamaterial slab of thickness smaller than 100 nanometers lying on a linear epsilon-near-zero metamaterial substrate. We predict that, in free-space coupling configuration, the device, operating at low-intensity, would display plasmon mediated hysteresis behavior since the phase difference between the reflected and the incident optical waves turns out to be multi-valued and dependent on the history of the excitation process. Such an hysteresis behavior would allow to regard the proposed device as a compact memory unit whose state is accessible by measuring either the mentioned phase difference or the power, which is multi-valued as well, carried by the nonlinear plasmon wave. Since multiple plasmon powers comprise both positive and negative values, the device would also operate as a switch of the plasmon power direction at each jump along an hysteresis loop.

9 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Epsilon-Near-Zero (ENZ) Metamaterials and Electromagnetic Sources: Tailoring the Radiation Phase Pattern
• Multistability at arbitrary low optical intensities in a metallo-dielectric layered structure

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• |ε|-Near-Zero materials in the near-infrared
• Study of plasmonic slot waveguides with a nonlinear metamaterial core: semi-analytical and numerical methods
• Unlocking the full potential of wave-matter nonlinear coupling in the epsilon-near-zero regime