Ultrafast all-optical modulation with hyperbolic metamaterial integrated in Si photonic circuitry

The integration of optical metamaterials within silicon integrated photonic circuitry bears significantly potential in the design of low-power, nanoscale footprint, all-optical functionalities. We propose a novel concept and provide detailed analysis of an on-chip ultrafast all-optical modulator based on a hyperbolic metamaterial integrated in a silicon waveguide. The anisotropic metamaterial based on gold nanorods is placed on top of the silicon waveguide to form a modulator with a 300x440x600 nm3 footprint. For the operating wavelength of 1.5 μm, the optimized geometry of the device has insertion loss of about 5 dB and a modulation depth of 35% with a sub-ps switching rate. The switching energy estimated from nonlinear transient dynamic numerical simulations is 3.7 pJ/bit when the transmission is controlled optically at a wavelength of 532 nm, resonant with the transverse plasmonic mode of the metamaterial. The switching mechanism is based on the control of the hybridization of eigenmodes in the metamaterial slab and the Si waveguide.