Plasmonic metafibers electro-optic modulators

Abstract

Digitalizing optical signals through electric driving signals, electro-optic modulators (EOMs) are one of the cardinal elements in modern optical communications. Most of current EOM devices are targeting on-chip integrations, which routinely suffer from high coupling losses, complex optical alignments and single-band operations. In this study, we for the first time integrate a lumped EOM device on the endfaces of a single-mode optical fiber jumper for fast amplitude modulations. Profiting from ultrathin and high quality-factor plasmonic metasurfaces, nanofabrication-friendly and highly efficient EO polymers and coupling-free connections with fiber networks, our EOM is demonstrated to allow dual-band operations (telecom O band and S band) and high-speed modulations (~1 GHz at a bias voltage of ±9 V). This work offers an avenue to ‘plug-and-play’ implementations of EO devices and ultracompact “all-in-fibers” optical systems for communications, imaging, sensing and many others.