Nonreciprocal transmission of electromagnetic waves with nonlinear active plasmonic metasurfaces

Abstract

Nonreciprocity is important for optical information processing, full-duplex communications, and protection of sensitive laser equipment from unwanted reflections. However, it is very challenging to obtain strong nonreciprocal response in optical frequencies, especially when nanoscale configurations are considered. In this work, we solve this problem by demonstrating a compact bifacial plasmonic metasurface that acts as a new ultrathin nonreciprocal transmission filter at near-infrared frequencies. The proposed nanostructure is simple to be practically implemented, since it is composed of two silver nanostripes with different dimensions placed on both sides of an ultrathin active dielectric spacing layer. The introduced gain leads to an exceptional point formation in the linear operation regime, where unidirectional perfect transmission due to loss compensation is achieved from the presented non-Hermitian parity-time symmetric nanoscale system. The demonstrated plasmonic metasurface breaks the Lorentz reciprocity law at the nanoscale when its nonlinear response is considered, mainly due to its spatially asymmetric geometry combined with enhanced nonlinearity. Strong and broadband nonreciprocity with unity transmission contrast from opposite directions is realized under relatively low input laser intensity values. Furthermore, asymmetric nonlinear third harmonic generation with a pronounced contrast is also illustrated by the same nonreciprocal metasurface design. The findings of this work can lead to the realization of various new self-induced nonreciprocal nanophotonic configurations, such as integrated ultrafast switches, ultrathin protective coatings, and asymmetric directional imaging devices.

References in corpus (11)

• Reflection-Free One-Way Edge Modes in a Gyromagnetic Photonic Crystal
• Coherent Perfect Absorbers: Time-reversed Lasers
• PT-symmetry breaking and laser-absorber modes in optical scattering systems
• Unidirectional Nonlinear PT-symmetric Optical Structures
• Asymmetric parametric generation of images with nonlinear dielectric metasurfaces
• Electromagnetic Isolation Induced by Time-Varying Metasurfaces: Non-Reciprocal Bragg Grating
• Exceptional points and spectral singularities in active epsilon-near-zero plasmonic waveguides
• Self-induced passive nonreciprocal transmission by nonlinear bifacial dielectric metasurfaces
• Giant Non-reciprocity Near Exceptional Point Degeneracies
• Tunable and broadband coherent perfect absorbers with nonlinear and amplification performance based on asymmetric bifacial graphene metasurfaces
• One-sided destructive quantum interference from an exceptional point-enabled metasurface

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Hybrid Graphene-Plasmon Gratings
• Self-induced nonreciprocity from asymmetric photonic topological insulators