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Science

Time-Reversed Lasing and Interferometric Control of Absorption

Wenjie Wan, Y. D. Chong, Li Ge, Heeso Noh, A. Douglas Stone, Hui W. Cao

Published Feb 17, 2011• 826 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In the time-reversed counterpart to laser emission, incident coherent optical fields are perfectly absorbed within a resonator that contains a loss medium instead of a gain medium. The incident fields and frequency must coincide with those of the corresponding laser with gain. We demonstrated this effect for two counterpropagating incident fields in a silicon cavity, showing that scattering [corrected] can be modulated [corrected] by two orders of magnitude, the maximum predicted by theory for our experimental setup. In addition, we showed that absorption can be reduced substantially by varying the relative phase of the incident fields. The device, termed a "coherent perfect absorber," functions as an absorptive interferometer, with potential practical applications in integrated optics.

DOI
10.1126/science.1200735

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In the time-reversed counterpart to laser emission, incident coherent optical fields are perfectly absorbed within a resonator that contains a loss medium instead of a gain medium. The incident fields and frequency must coincide with those of the corresponding laser with gain. We demonstrated this effect for two counterpropagating incident fields in a silicon cavity, showing that scattering [corrected] can be modulated [corrected] by two orders of magnitude, the maximum predicted by theory for our experimental setup. In addition, we showed that absorption can be reduced substantially by varying the relative phase of the incident fields. The device, termed a "coherent perfect absorber," functions as an absorptive interferometer, with potential practical applications in integrated optics.
Recent works [Chong et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 053901 (2010); Wan et al., Science 331, 889 (2011)] have shown that the time-reversed process of lasing at threshold realizes a coherent perfect absorber (CPA). In a CPA, a lossy medium in an optical cavity with a specific degree of dissipation, equal in modulus to the gain of the lasing medium, can perfectly absorb coherent optical waves at discrete frequencies that are the time-reversed counterpart of the lasing modes. Here the concepts of time reversal of lasing and CPA are extended for optical radiation emitted by a laser operated in an arbitrary regime, i.e., for transient, chaotic, or periodic coherent optical fields. We prove that any electromagnetic signal E(t)E(t)E(t) generated by a laser system SSS operated in an arbitrary regime can be perfectly absorbed by a CPA device ${S}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ which is simply realized by placing inside SSS a broadband linear absorber (attenuator) of appropriate transmittance. As examples, we discuss CPA devices that perfectly absorb a chaotic laser signal and a frequency-modulated optical wave.
In recent works, it has been shown, rather generally, that the time-reversed process of lasing at threshold realizes a coherent perfect absorber (CPA). In a CPA, a lossy medium in an optical cavity with a specific degree of dissipation, equal in modulus to the gain of the lasing medium, can perfectly absorb coherent optical waves that are the time-reversed counterpart of the lasing field. Here, the time-reversed process of lasing is considered in detail for a homogeneously broadened two-level medium in an optical cavity and the conditions for CPA are derived. It is shown that, owing to the dispersive properties of the two-level medium, exact time-reversal symmetry is broken and the frequency of the field at which CPA occurs is generally different than the one of the lasing mode. Moreover, at a large cooperation parameter, the observation of CPA in the presence of bistability requires one to operate in the upper branch of the hysteresis cycle.
Recently, a concept of time reversed lasing or coherent perfect absorber (CPA) has been proposed by A. D. Stone and co-workers, and was shortly experimentally demonstrated by them. The CPA system is illuminated coherently and monochromatically by the time reverse of the output of a lasing mode and the incident radiation is perfectly absorbed. Shortly afterwards, Stefano Longhi extended the idea to realize a CPA for colored incident light, and have theoretically shown that the time reversal of optical parametric oscillation (OPO) in a nonlinear medium could also realize a colored CPA for incident signal and idler fields which can be seemed as a kind of nonlinear CPA. Here we present the realization of such time-reversed processes in nonlinear optics regime, including time-reversed second harmonic generation (SHG) for coherent absorption at harmonic frequency of the pump and time-reversed optical parametric amplification (OPA) for coherent attenuation of colored travelling optical fields. Time reversed SHG is carried out at both phase matching and mismatching conditions, which shows parametric near perfect absorption at the harmonic frequency of the pump. The time reversal of OPA is demonstrated experimentally in a nonlinear medium to form a coherent absorber for perpendicularly polarized signal and idler travelling waves, realizing in the condition of OPA by a type II phase matching scheme. The absorption of signal/idler pair occurs at some specific phase difference. This is the first experimental demonstration of coherent absorption processes in nonlinear optics regime.
Abstract Time-invariant photonic structures amplify or absorb light based on their intrinsic material gain or loss. The coherent interference of multiple beams in space, e.g., in a resonator, can be exploited to tailor the wave interaction with material gain or loss, respectively maximizing lasing or coherent perfect absorption. By contrast, a time-varying system is not bound to conserve energy, even in the absence of material gain or loss, and can support amplification or absorption of a probe wave through parametric phenomena. Here, we demonstrate theoretically and experimentally how a subwavelength film of indium tin oxide, whose bulk permittivity is homogeneously and periodically modulated via optical pumping, can be dynamically tuned to act both as a non-resonant amplifier and a perfect absorber, by manipulating the relative phase of two counterpropagating probe beams. This extends the concept of coherent perfect absorption to the temporal domain. We interpret this result as selective switching between the gain and loss modes present in the momentum bandgap of a periodically modulated medium. By tailoring the relative intensity of the two probes, high-contrast modulation can be achieved with up to 80% absorption and 400% amplification. Our results demonstrate control of gain and loss in time-varying media at optical frequencies and pave the way towards coherent manipulation of light in Floquet-engineered complex photonic systems.
In recent works, the idea of time-reversed laser oscillation has been proposed and demonstrated to realize a two-channel coherent perfect absorber [Y. D. Chong et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 053901 (2010); W. Wan et al., Science 331, 889 (2011)]. Here the time reversal of optical parametric oscillation in a nonlinear χ(2) medium is considered and shown to realize a coherent perfect absorber for colored incident signal and idler fields. A detailed analysis is presented for the time-reversed process of mirrorless optical parametric oscillation in the full nonlinear regime.
We propose a scheme for controlling coherent photon absorption by electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in a three-level atom-cavity system. Coherent perfect absorption (CPA) occurs when time-reversed symmetry of lasing process is obtained with the destructive interference at the cavity interfaces. The frequency range of CPA is generally dependent on the decay rates of the cavity mirrors. The smaller decay rate of the cavity mirror causes the wider frequency range of CPA, and the needed intensity of the probe fields is larger to satisfy CPA condition for a given frequency. Although Rabi frequency of the control laser has little effect on the frequency range of CPA, with EIT-type quantum interference, the CPA mode is tunable by the control laser. In addition, with the relative phase, the probe fields can be perfectly transmitted and/or reflected. Therefore, the system can be used as a controllable coherent perfect absorber or transmitter (reflector), and our work may have practical applications in optical logic devices.