Controlling light with light using coherent meta-devices: all-optical transistor, summator and invertor

Abstract

Although vast amounts of information are conveyed by photons in optical fibers, the majority of data processing is performed electronically, creating the infamous 'information bottleneck' and consuming energy at an increasingly unsustainable rate. The potential for photonic devices to directly manipulate light remains unfulfilled due largely to a lack of materials with strong, fast optical nonlinearities. In this paper, we show that small-signal amplifier, summator and invertor functions for optical signals may be realized using a four-port device that exploits the coherent interaction of beams on a planar plasmonic metamaterial, assuming no intrinsic nonlinearity. The redistribution of energy among ports can be coherently controlled at the single photon level, with THz bandwidth and without introducing signal distortion, thereby presenting powerful opportunities for novel optical data processing architectures, complexity oracles and the locally coherent networks that are becoming part of the mainstream telecommunications agenda.