A magneto-electro-optical effect in a plasmonic nanowire material

Electro- and magneto-optical phenomena play key roles in photonic technology enabling light modulators, optical data storage, sensors and numerous spectroscopic techniques. Optical effects, linear and quadratic in external electric and magnetic field are widely known and comprehensively studied. How...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2015-04, Vol.6 (1), p.7021-7021, Article 7021
Main Authors: Valente, João, Ou, Jun-Yu, Plum, Eric, Youngs, Ian J., Zheludev, Nikolay I.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/301/357/1016
639/766/400/1021
639/766/400/1101
639/925/357/1015
Data processing
Data storage
Electro-optical effect
Humanities and Social Sciences
Light modulators
Lorentz force
Magnetic fields
Metamaterials
multidisciplinary
Nanotechnology
Nanowires
Photonics
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Sensors
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Summary:Electro- and magneto-optical phenomena play key roles in photonic technology enabling light modulators, optical data storage, sensors and numerous spectroscopic techniques. Optical effects, linear and quadratic in external electric and magnetic field are widely known and comprehensively studied. However, optical phenomena that depend on the simultaneous application of external electric and magnetic fields in conventional media are barely detectable and technologically insignificant. Here we report that a large reciprocal magneto-electro-optical effect can be observed in metamaterials. In an artificial chevron nanowire structure fabricated on an elastic nano-membrane, the Lorentz force drives reversible transmission changes on application of a fraction of a volt when the structure is placed in a fraction-of-tesla magnetic field. We show that magneto-electro-optical modulation can be driven to hundreds of thousands of cycles per second promising applications in magneto-electro-optical modulators and field sensors at nano-tesla levels. Metamaterials can be engineered to provide electric and magnetic responses that cannot be achieved in natural media. Here, the authors present a metamaterial based on plasmonic chevron nanowires that it exhibits a large reciprocal magneto-electro-optical effect driven by the Lorentz force.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/ncomms8021