title: Metawaveguide for Asymmetric Interferometric Light-Light Switching.
abstract: Light-light switching typically requires strong nonlinearity where intense laser fields route and direct data flows of weak power, leading to a high power consumption that limits its practical use. Here we report an experimental demonstration of a metawaveguide that operates exactly in the opposite way in a linear regime, where an intense laser field is interferometrically manipulated on demand by a weak control beam with a modulation extinction ratio up to approximately 60 dB. This asymmetric control results from operating near an exceptional point of the scattering matrix, which gives rise to intrinsic asymmetric reflections of the metawaveguide through delicate interplay between index and absorption. The designed metawaveguide promises low-power interferometric light-light switching for the next generation of optical devices and networks.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, The State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York 14260, USA.
authors.forename: Han
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Kavli Nanoscience Institute, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.
authors.forename: William S
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Fegadolli
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, The State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York 14260, USA.
authors.forename: Jiakai
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, The State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York 14260, USA.
authors.forename: Zhifeng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Engineering Science and Physics, College of Staten Island, CUNY, Staten Island, New York 10314, USA.|The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York, New York 10016, USA.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ge
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Kavli Nanoscience Institute, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.
authors.forename: Axel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Scherer
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, The State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York 14260, USA.
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Feng