(Peer-Reviewed) Ultrafast all-optical modulation of wide-bandwidth pulses enabled by silicon-metasurfaces
Kaloyan Georgiev ¹ ², Khosro Zangeneh Kamali ³ ⁴, Anton A. Trifonov ², Giulia Crotti ⁵, Lyuben Petrov ¹ ², Stefan Georgiev ¹, Hristo Iliev ¹, Lei Xu ⁶, Unai Arregui Leon ⁵, Mohsen Rahmani ⁶, Giuseppe Della Valle ⁵, Ivan Buchvarov ¹ ² ⁷, Dragomir Neshev ² ³
¹ Department of Physics, Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Sofia 1164, Bulgaria
² John Atanasoff Center for Bio and Nano Photonics (JAC BNP), Sofia 1164, Bulgaria
³ ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS), Dept. of Electronic Materials Engineering, Research School of Physics, Australian National University, ACT 2601, Australia
⁴ Department of Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg 412 96, Sweden
⁵ Dipartimento di Fisica - Politecnico di Milano, Milano 20133, Italy
⁶ Advanced Optics and Photonics Laboratory, Department of Engineering, School of Science and Technology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham NG11 8NS, United Kingdom
⁷ Institute of Solid State Physics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Tsarigradsko Chaussee 72, Sofia 1784, Bulgaria
Opto-Electronic Advances, 2026-09-15
Abstract
Semiconductor metasurfaces have emerged as an effective platform for all-optical modulation thanks to their resonant light confinement and the enhancement of ultrafast optical effects like the Kerr effect and free-carrier generation. However, their narrow resonance features also restrict the available bandwidth for efficient modulation. Here, we demonstrate that a kink-like transmission spectral profile of a silicon metasurface could enable high-contrast modulation of wide-bandwidth pulses.
We studied the all-optical ultrafast transmission modulation of the silicon metasurface induced by free-carrier excitation in a pump-probe configuration at different polarizations. We achieved ultrafast modulation of 28% (10%) with a speed of 25 ps and a bandwidth of up to 14 nm (49 nm) for y- and x-polarizations, respectively. Our results open up new opportunities for high-contrast, all-optical modulation of short pulses, with applications in optical communications and computing.
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