Epsilon-near-zero plasmonic waveguides to enhance nonlinear coherent light-matter interactions

Abstract: We demonstrate a way to coherently control light at the nanoscale and achieve coherent perfect absorption (CPA) by using epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) plasmonic waveguides. The presented waveguides support an effective ENZ response at their cut-off frequency, combined with strong and homogeneous field enhancement along their nanochannels. The CPA conditions are perfectly satisfied at the ENZ frequency, surprisingly by a subwavelength plasmonic structure, resulting in strong CPA under the illumination of two counter-propagating plane waves with appropriate amplitudes and phases. In addition , we investigate the nonlinear response of the proposed ENZ plasmonic configuration as we increase the input intensity of the incident waves. We demonstrate that the CPA phenomenon can become both intensity- and phase-dependent in this case leading to new tunable all-optical switching and absorption devices.