Abstract
The exponential growth of telecommunications bandwidth will require next generation optical networks, where multiple spatial information channels will be transmitted in parallel. To realise the full potential of parallel optical data channels, fast and scalable multichannel solutions for processing of optical data are of paramount importance. Established solutions based on the nonlinear wave interaction in photorefractive materials are slow. Here we experimentally demonstrate all-optical logical operations between pairs of simulated spatially multiplexed information channels using the coherent interaction of light with light on a plasmonic metamaterial. The approach is suitable for fiber implementation and—in principle—operates with diffraction-limited spatial resolution, 100 THz bandwidth, and arbitrarily low intensities, thus promising ultrafast, low-power solutions for all-optical parallel data processing.
Highlights
Encoding, transmitting, harvesting, and processing information in the spatial domain is anticipated to be the breakthrough in the hunt for technologies that will overcome the forthcoming capacity crunch.[1,2] Research advances in the field of multi-core and multi-mode fiber design and fabrication have flourished over the past few years, providing numerous efficient routes to data transfer in spatially multiplexed channels.[3,4,5] in order to exploit the capacity increase of spatial optical parallelism, new data processing schemes are needed
An ideal lossy beam splitter can be realized by a planar metamaterial, as these structures allow precise engineering of their transmission, reflection, and absorption characteristics
A planar metamaterial is a periodically structured film of substantially sub-wavelength thickness and its optical properties are controlled by the constituent material(s) and the geometry of its unit cell.[18]
Summary
Encoding, transmitting, harvesting, and processing information in the spatial domain is anticipated to be the breakthrough in the hunt for technologies that will overcome the forthcoming capacity crunch.[1,2] Research advances in the field of multi-core and multi-mode fiber design and fabrication have flourished over the past few years, providing numerous efficient routes to data transfer in spatially multiplexed channels.[3,4,5] in order to exploit the capacity increase of spatial optical parallelism, new data processing schemes are needed. A planar metamaterial is a periodically structured film of substantially sub-wavelength thickness and its optical properties are controlled by the constituent material(s) and the geometry of its (sub-wavelength sized) unit cell.[18] Using a thin plasmonic metamaterial as our lossy beam splitter, we apply spatially selective absorption of light to simple representations of spatially multiplexed signals in free-space, demonstrating all-optical Boolean logic operations between such information channels.
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