Metamaterial all-optical switching based on resonance mode coupling in dielectric meta-atoms

Abstract: All-optical switching based on optical nonlinearity must undergo complex processes of light-mater interaction in atom and electron scale, so a relative high power and long response time is required, that construct main bottlenecks in all-optical technology. In this paper, we propose a new mechanism for building all-optical switching based on a change resonance modes of meta-atoms in metamaterials, not involved optical nonlinearity of materials. A metamaterial composed of cubic dielectric meta-atoms periodically embedded in a background matrix is designed and constructed. All-optical switch functionality by modulating the resonance modes in meta-atoms utilizing a vertical direction switch light whose power is the same value with that of the signal light is demonstrated in microwave range theoretically and experimentally. This results represent a significant step towards obtaining all-optical switching devices with extremely low threshold power and high switching speed.