Expanding momentum bandgaps in photonic time crystals through resonances

Abstract

The realization of photonic time crystals is a major opportunity but also comes with significant challenges. The most pressing one, potentially, is the requirement for a substantial modulation strength in the material properties to create a noticeable momentum bandgap. Reaching that noticeable bandgap in optics is highly demanding with current, and possibly also future, material platforms since their modulation strength is small by tendency. Here, we demonstrate that by introducing temporal variations in a resonant material, the momentum bandgap can be drastically expanded with modulation strengths in reach with known low-loss materials and realistic laser pump powers. The resonance can emerge from an intrinsic material resonance or a suitably spatially structured material supporting a structural resonance. Our concept is validated for resonant bulk media and optical metasurfaces and paves the way toward the first experimental realizations of photonic time crystals.

9 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Photonic time crystals: Theory and applications
• $\hslash \omega$ versus $\hslash \mathbf{k}$: Dispersion and Energy Constraints on Time-Varying Photonic Materials and Time Crystals
• Homogenization of Dispersive Spacetime Crystals: Anomalous Dispersion and Negative Stored Energy

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• Lattice-induced sound trapping in biperiodic metasurfaces of acoustic resonators
• Resonant states of structured photonic time crystals
• Frequency Domain Berry Curvature Effect on Time Refraction
• Intrinsic space-time crystalline order in a hybrid Josephson junction
• Singular value decomposition to describe bound states in the continuum in periodic metasurfaces
• Generation and Enhancement of Persistent Nanoscale Magnetization in All-Dielectric Metasurfaces by Optically Injected and Localized Free Carriers