Reconfigurable nonlinear losses of nanomaterial covered waveguides

Autor: Davletkhanov Ayvaz, Mkrtchyan Aram, Bunkov Alexey, Chermoshentsev Dmitry, Shashkov Mikhail, Ilatovskii Daniil, Krasnikov Dmitry, Nasibulin Albert, Gladush Yuriy
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
Zdroj: Nanophotonics, Vol 12, Iss 22, Pp 4229-4238 (2023)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2192-8614
DOI: 10.1515/nanoph-2023-0563
Popis: Optical waveguides covered with thin films, which transmittance can be controlled by external action, are widely used in various applications from optical modulators to saturable absorbers. It is natural to suggest that the losses through such a waveguide will be proportional to the absorption coefficient of the covering material. In this letter, we demonstrate that under certain conditions, this simple assumption fails. Instead, we observe that the reduction of the material loss of the film can lead to an increase in the propagation losses through the waveguide. For this, we use a side polished fiber covered with a single-walled carbon nanotube thin film whose absorption can be attenuated either by a short pulse illumination (due to absorption saturation) or with electrochemical gating. For the films thicker than 50 nm, we observe saturable absorption to turn into optical limiting with nonmonotonic dependence on the incident power. With a numerical simulation, we identify that this nontrivial behavior comes from mode reshaping due to changes in the absorption coefficient of the covering film. We demonstrate the applicability of the observed effect by fabricating the device which nonlinear optical response can be controllably switched between saturable absorbing and optical limiting. Finally, we utilize an analytical approach to predict the required parameters and corresponding nontrivial shapes of the nonlinear absorbance curves. These results provide new perspectives for engineering complex reconfigurable nonlinear optical responses and transmittance dependences of nanomaterial covered waveguides.
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