Superabsorption: Research Highlights

research highlights
ISOLATORS
Power up
Opt. Express 22, 2322623230 (2014)
Faraday isolators magneto-optic devices

that act as a one-way valve for light are
highly useful components for controlling
the flow of light within photonic systems.
Usually such devices are small and designed
for use with the low-power laser light
encountered in applications such as optical
communications. Now, two researchers
from the Institute of Applied Physics of the
Russian Academy of Sciences and Nizhny
Novgorod State University in Russia report
a version that is compatible with powers
on the order of kilowatts. The isolator is
based on a 6-mm-diameter, 7-mm-long
cylindrically shaped crystal of a magnetooptic material called TSAG (terbium
scandium aluminium garnet). The TSAG
material was chosen because it offers a
high Verdet constant and the possibility of
growing large-aperture single crystals with
good optical quality. Initial prototypes offer
an isolation ratio of 30dB for a laser power
of 500W at a wavelength of 1,076nm. The
team say that following improvements in the
growth of the crystals to reduce their optical
absorption it should be possible to scale
the devices to operate with laser powers in
excess of 1kW.
OG
QUANTUM EMITTERS
Efficient collection
Optica 1, 203208 (2014)
One of the main components of any

quantum network is a source of single
photons emitted in a deterministic way.
However, a serious obstacle to hurdle is the
collection of such photons, which can be
emitted in any direction within a 4 solid
angle. Xiao-Liu Chu and co-workers from
the Universities of Erlangen and Potsdam
in Germany and the Los Alamos National

Laboratory in the USA now claim to have
solved the problem. The team built a planar,
metallo-dielectric antenna that directs
the photons with an efficiency exceeding
99% just as theoretically predicted.
In their experimental configuration, a
sapphire cover glass is coated with two
polymer layers of PMMA/PVA, which
contain light-emitting quantum dots with
a CdSe core within a CdS shell. A movable
metallic mirror is then positioned in free
space a small distance above the planar
structure. Investigation of the angular
emission pattern from the structure when
it is optically excited with the gold mirror
at various distances from the quantum
dots revealed that part of the emission
was reflected at the mirror interface and
then interfered with the emission direct
from the dot. The resulting fluorescence
emission patterns were heavily modulated,
with a 10% larger intensity when the mirror
was in place. The team says that the result
is an important building block towards
the development of an ultrabright singlephoton source that can deterministically
deliver several tens of millions of photons
per second.
MM
GRAPHENE
Nanophotonic switching cell

J.Opt. 16, 105005 (2014)
Almir Wirth Lima and Antonio Srgio

Bezerra Sombra at the University of Cear in
Brazil have theoretically proposed a scheme
for realizing a nanophotonic switching cell
that takes advantage of the unique electronic
properties of graphene. It is well known that
the transportation of electrons in graphene
sheets is governed by the Dirac equation and
that they propagate as if they were massless.
Furthermore, the Dirac-cone-shaped
dispersion characteristics of graphene can be
modified using an externally applied voltage.
The authors build on these two properties to
design a switching cell that operates in the
infrared and terahertz frequency ranges. The
device comprises a directional coupler and
two graphene nanoribbons that are used as
waveguides. They are separated vertically
and embedded in a boron nitride substrate
a material chosen due to its low impact on
the properties of graphene. When optical
power is fed into one of the two ports, bar
operation (in which power exits from the
opposite end of the same waveguide) or cross
operation (power exits from the adjacent
waveguide) of the cell is determined by the
value of the graphene nanoribbons dielectric
constant. The externally applied voltage
changes the chemical potential, allowing the
NATURE PHOTONICS | VOL 8 | NOVEMBER 2014 | www.nature.com/naturephotonics
2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
dielectric constant to be fine-tuned to the

desired value.
MM
QUANTUM PHYSICS
Superabsorption
Nature Commun. 5, 4705 (2014)
NPG
The pump beam was used to generate

signal and idler beams each with a
wavelength of 1,536nm through
parametric down-conversion in a
periodically poled KTiOPO4 waveguide,
and a reference beam was converted into
pseudothermal light by employing a rotating
speckle disk. The idler beam was used to
herald two-photon states, and the signal
beam and pseudothermal light were mixed
and sent to an avalanche photodiode. The
feasibility of the technique is demonstrated
by reconstructing single-photon, thermal
and two-photon states. Another powerful
feature of the scheme is its robustness with
respect to the noise and deviation affecting
the measurement set-up.
NH
Superradiance refers to the collective

emission of light from a group of N two-level
systems at a rate that is proportional to N2,
which is significantly higher than the rate
predicted by classical physics. Although
enhanced emission rates are closely linked
to enhanced absorption rates due to timereversal symmetry, the latter are much less
likely to occur. Now, an international team
from universities in the UK, Singapore and
Australia have realized a number of analytical
and numerical calculations to identify
the conditions under which absorption
dominates emission. The model system is a
ring structure of N two-level systems, whose
transition rates must be engineered so that
the entire systems ladder of Dicke states
can be considered as an effective two-level
model. Enhancement of the transition rates
at the effective central good frequency is
possible by engineering the spectral density
or the occupation number of the modes. In
fact, a large detuning between adjacent Dicke
transitions can prove extremely useful for
this purpose. As the authors propose such a
scheme for applications in energy harvesting,
they focus on defining an irreversible
trapping process to extract only the photons
at the good frequency. They also show that
the system can be reset using a chirped
laser pulse. The results can potentially be
transposed in other systems that range from
molecules to quantum dots, with interesting
applications in optical or microwave sensing,
solar cells and wireless power transfer. MM
Written by Oliver Graydon, Noriaki Horiuchi and
Maria Maragkou.
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research highlights

Opt. Express 22, 2322623230 (2014)

Faraday isolators magneto-optic devices

One of the main components of any

in Germany and the Los Alamos National

Nanophotonic switching cell

Almir Wirth Lima and Antonio Srgio

NATURE PHOTONICS | VOL 8 | NOVEMBER 2014 | www.nature.com/naturephotonics

2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved

dielectric constant to be fine-tuned to the

Nature Commun. 5, 4705 (2014)

The pump beam was used to generate

Superradiance refers to the collective

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