Ultrafast all-optical phase switching enabled by epsilon-near-zero materials in silicon

[EN] Transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) have emerged as both particularly appealing epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) materials and remarkable candidates for the design and fabrication of active silicon nanophotonic devices. However, the leverage of TCO's ultrafast nonlinearities requires precise c...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Navarro-Arenas, Juan, Parra Gomez, Jorge|||0000-0003-4610-3411, Sanchis Kilders, Pablo|||0000-0003-2984-4218
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV)
Repositorio:RiuNet. Repositorio Institucional de la Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:riunet.upv.es:10251/195460
Acceso en línea:https://riunet.upv.es/handle/10251/195460
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:All-optical
Phase switching
Epsilon-near-zero
Silicon photonics
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Descripción
Sumario:[EN] Transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) have emerged as both particularly appealing epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) materials and remarkable candidates for the design and fabrication of active silicon nanophotonic devices. However, the leverage of TCO's ultrafast nonlinearities requires precise control of the intricate physical mechanisms that take place upon excitation. Here we investigate such behavior for ultrafast all-optical phase switching in hybrid TCO-silicon waveguides through numerical simulation. The model is driven from the framework of intraband-transition-induced optical nonlinearity. Transient evolution is studied with a phenomenological two-temperature model. Our results reveal the best compromise between energy consumption, insertion losses and phase change per unit length for enabling ultrafast switching times below 100 fs and compact active lengths in the order of several micrometers.