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Linear frequency conversion via sudden merging of meta-atoms in time-variant metasurfaces

Nature Photonics volume 12, pages 765–773 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

The energy of an electromagnetic wave is converted as the wave passes through a temporal boundary. Thus, effective temporal control of the medium is critical for frequency conversion. Here, we propose rapidly time-variant metasurfaces as a frequency-converting platform and experimentally demonstrate their efficacy at terahertz frequencies. The proposed metasurface is designed for the sudden merging of two distinct metallic meta-atoms into a single one upon ultrafast optical excitation. This sudden merging creates a spectrally designed temporal boundary on the metasurface, by which the frequency conversion can be achieved and engineered. Interestingly, the time delay between the abrupt temporal boundary and the input terahertz pulse is found to be strongly related to the phase of the converted wave as well as its amplitude. As the proposed scheme does not rely on the nonlinearity, it may be particularly advantageous for the frequency conversion of waves with weak intensities.

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Fig. 1: Principles of frequency conversion in time-variant metasurfaces.
Fig. 2: Schematic of frequency conversion process of a proposed time-variant metasurface.
Fig. 3: Linearity of frequency conversion in the time-variant metasurface.
Fig. 4: Trajectories of complex amplitudes for the converted field with respect to the time delay.
Fig. 5: Power spectral densities and trajectories of the complex amplitude of the converted field.
Fig. 6: Steering and focusing of the converted wave from the time-variant metasurfaces.

Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Yu and X. Piao for helpful discussions. This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) through the government of Korea (MSIP; grant no. NRF-2017R1A2B3012364, 2017M3C1A3013923). The work was also supported by the Center for Advanced Meta-Materials (CAMM) funded by Korea Government (MSIP) as Global Frontier Project (NRF-2014M3A6B3063709).

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Kanghee Lee, Jaehyeon Son.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Republic of Korea

    Kanghee Lee, Jaehyeon Son, Jagang Park, Byungsoo Kang, Wonju Jeon & Bumki Min

  2. Department of Physics, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Republic of Korea

    Fabian Rotermund

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Contributions

K.L., J.S. and B.M. conceived the original idea. J.S., B.K. and J.P. fabricated metasurface samples and terahertz bandpass filters. K.L., J.S. and J.P. performed the measurements. J.S. performed the finite-difference time-domain simulations. K.L., J.S., J.P., W.J., F.R. and B.M. discussed the theoretical and experimental results. K.L., J.S. and B.M. wrote the manuscript, and all authors provided feedback.

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Correspondence to Bumki Min.

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Lee, K., Son, J., Park, J. et al. Linear frequency conversion via sudden merging of meta-atoms in time-variant metasurfaces. Nature Photon 12, 765–773 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-018-0259-4

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