Transmission-type photonic doping for high-efficiency epsilon-near-zero supercoupling

• Published in: Nature communications 2023-10, Vol.14 (1), p.6154-6154, Article 6154
• Main Authors: Yan, Wendi, Zhou, Ziheng, Li, Hao, Li, Yue
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 639/166/987; 639/624/399/1015; 639/766/1130/2799; Channels; Doping; Efficiency; Energy transmission; Humanities and Social Sciences; Integrated circuits; Millimeter waves; multidisciplinary; Photonics; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Transmission efficiency; Waveguides
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-41965-5

Supercoupling effect is an exotic and counterintuitive physical phenomenon of epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) media, in which the light can be “squeezed” and tunneled through flexible channels substantially narrower than its wavelength. Theoretically, ENZ channels with infinitely small widths perform ideal supercoupling with full energy transmission and zero-phase advance. As a feasible solution to demonstrate ENZ supercoupling through a finite-width channel, photonic doping can assist the light in squeezing, but the resonant dopant introduces inevitable losses. Here, we propose an approach of transmission-type photonic doping to achieve proximate ideal ENZ supercoupling. In contrast to the conventional resonance-type photonic doping, our proposed transmission-type doping replaces high-quality-factor two-dimensional resonant doping modes with low-quality-factor one-dimensional modes, such that obviously high transmission efficiency and zero-phase advance in ENZ supercoupling is achieved and observed in experiments. Benefiting from the high-efficiency ENZ supercoupling, waveguides with near-total energy transmission can be engineered with arbitrary dimensions and shapes, serving as flexible power conduits in the paradigm of waveguide integrated circuits for future millimeter-wave and terahertz integrated circuit innovations. The authors present a transmission-type doping approach to reduce resonant losses in photonic doping. Assisted by the approach, proximate ideal epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) supercoupling with neartotal energy transmission and zero-phase advance is achieved in experiments.