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Electrically tunable nonlinear polaritonic metasurface

Abstract

Nonlinear polaritonic metasurfaces created by the coupling of intersubband nonlinearities in semiconductor heterostructures with optical modes in nanoresonators have recently demonstrated efficient frequency mixings at very low pumping intensities of the order of a few tens of kilowatts per square centimetre. In these subwavelength structures, the efficiency, spectral bandwidth and local nonlinear phase of wave mixing do not depend on phase matching but only on the nonlinear response of the constituent meta-atoms. We exploit this property to demonstrate an electrically tunable nonlinear metasurface that combines a plasmonic nanocavity and a quantum-engineered semiconductor heterostructure, in which the magnitude and phase of the local nonlinear responses are controlled by a bias voltage through the quantum-confined Stark effect. We demonstrate spectral tuning, dynamic intensity modulation and dynamic beam manipulation for second-harmonic generation. Our work suggests a route for electrically reconfigurable flat nonlinear optical elements with versatile functionalities.

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Fig. 1: Electrically tunable nonlinear polaritonic metasurface.
Fig. 2: Numerical simulations and linear characterization of the metasurface.
Fig. 3: Nonlinear characterization of the electrically tunable metasurface.
Fig. 4: Dynamic nonlinear beam manipulations.

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Data availability

All the relevant data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

All the relevant computing codes that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a Basic Science Research Program and Nano Material Technology Development Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) under grant nos. 2019R1A2C4070623, 2020R1A4A3079834 and 2018M3A7B4070029 funded by the Korean Government (MSIT). Technical University of Munich group acknowledges support from the DARPA’s Nascent Light-Matter Interactions program. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Prof. Markus-Christian Amann who supervised the growth of the semiconductor heterostructure used in this study. Prof. Amann passed away unexpectedly on November 23, 2018.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

J.Y. designed the semiconductor heterostructure, calculated the physical parameters, fabricated the device and performed all the experimental measurements and simulations. F.D., G.B., M.-C.A. and M.A.B. performed the semiconductor heterostructure growth. S.P. assisted with the meta-atom design and simulations. I.H. and D.K. assisted with the device fabrication and measurement. J.L. conceived and developed the concept and directed the research. M.A.B., J.Y. and J.L. wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jongwon Lee.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Photonics thanks Yuanmu Yang, Shreyas Shah and Maxim Shcherbakov for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–9 and Discussion.

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Yu, J., Park, S., Hwang, I. et al. Electrically tunable nonlinear polaritonic metasurface. Nat. Photon. 16, 72–78 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-021-00923-7

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