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Asymmetric parametric generation of images with nonlinear dielectric metasurfaces

Nature Photonics volume 16, pages 561–565 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Subwavelength dielectric resonators assembled into metasurfaces have become a versatile tool for miniaturizing optical components approaching the nanoscale1,2,3. An important class of metasurface functionalities is associated with asymmetry in both the generation and transmission of light with respect to reversals of the positions of emitters and receivers4,5,6. The nonlinear light–matter interaction in metasurfaces7,8,9 offers a promising pathway towards miniaturization of the asymmetric control of light. Here we demonstrate asymmetric parametric generation of light in nonlinear metasurfaces. We assemble dissimilar nonlinear dielectric resonators into translucent metasurfaces that produce images in the visible spectral range on being illuminated by infrared radiation. By design, the metasurfaces produce different and completely independent images for the reversed direction of illumination, that is, when the positions of the infrared emitter and the visible light receiver are exchanged. Nonlinearity-enabled asymmetric control of light by subwavelength resonators paves the way towards novel nanophotonic components via dense integration of large quantities of nonlinear resonators into compact metasurface designs.

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Fig. 1: Concept of asymmetric parametric generation of images with a nonlinear metasurface.
Fig. 2: Optical properties of a metasurface unit cell.
Fig. 3: Symmetric linear and asymmetric nonlinear spectral response of a uniform metasurface.
Fig. 4: Set of resonators with dissimilar asymmetric parametric generation of light.
Fig. 5: Asymmetric parametric generation of images with nonlinear metasurfaces.

Data availability

All data in this study are available within the paper and the Supplementary Information. Additional information will be provided by S.K. and L.W. on reasonable request.

Code availability

The code used for modelling the data is available for download at https://pan.seu.edu.cn:443/link/4A3683E9DA843E10D06FFBA5B43DCDFD. Additional information will be provided by L.W. on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank V. Asadchy, A. Alu, C. Caloz, A. Poddubny, D. Smirnova, K. Simovski, I. Shadrivov and S. Tretyakov for numerous stimulating discussions. We acknowledge the use of the nanofabrication facility at Paderborn University and acknowledge the Australian National Fabrication Facility, ACT Node, for access to the electron microscope. S.S.K. acknowledges support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Australian Research Council (DE210100679) and the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant no. 896735). Z.D. acknowledges help from F. Tjiptoharsono with the fabrication etching recipe. T.Z. acknowledges funding by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 724306) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation; TRR142, no. 231447078, project B09). L.W. acknowledges support from the National Key R&D Program of China (2020YFB1806603), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 62101127), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province of China (BK20200393), SC project of Jiangsu Province (JSSCBS20210116) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2242022R10025). Y.K. acknowledges support from the Strategic Fund of the Australian National University, the Australian Research Council (grant no. DP210101292) and the US Army International Office (grant no. FA520921P0034).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Sergey S. Kruk, Lei Wang.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany

    Sergey S. Kruk, Basudeb Sain & Thomas Zentgraf

  2. Nonlinear Physics Center, Research School of Physics, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

    Sergey S. Kruk, Lei Wang & Yuri Kivshar

  3. National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Frontiers Science Center for Mobile Information Communication and Security, Southeast University, Nanjing, China

    Lei Wang

  4. Purple Mountain Laboratories, Nanjing, China

    Lei Wang

  5. Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, A*STAR (Agency for Science Technology, and Research), Singapore, Singapore

    Zhaogang Dong & Joel Yang

  6. Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore, Singapore

    Joel Yang

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Contributions

S.S.K. and L.W. conceived the idea. L.W. performed theoretical calculations. B.S., Z.D. and S.S.K. fabricated the samples. S.S.K. and L.W. performed experimental measurements. J.Y., T.Z. and Y.K. contributed to data analysis and to supervision of the project. S.S.K. wrote the first version of the manuscript. All co-authors contributed extensively to writing and to revisions of the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Sergey S. Kruk, Lei Wang or Yuri Kivshar.

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Nature Photonics thanks Christos Argyropoulos, Yuanmu Yang and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–4, Discussion and Tables 1–7.

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Kruk, S.S., Wang, L., Sain, B. et al. Asymmetric parametric generation of images with nonlinear dielectric metasurfaces. Nat. Photon. 16, 561–565 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-022-01018-7

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