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Van der Waals (vdWs) heterostructures assembled by stacking 2D crystal layers have proven to be a new material platform for high-performance optoelectronic applications such as thin film transistors, photodetectors, and emitters. Here, we demonstrate a novel device with strain tuning capabilities using MoS2/Sb2Te3 vdWs p-n heterojunction devices designed for photodetection in the visible to near-infrared spectrum. The heterojunction devices exhibit remarkable characteristics, such as a low dark current in the range of a few picoamperes and a high photoresponsivity of 0.12 A/W. Furthermore, the proposed devices exhibit exceptional tunability when subjected to a compressive strain of up to 0.3%. By introducing strain at the interface of the heterojunction, the materials bandgap is affected resulting in a significant change in the band structure of the heterojunction. This leads to a change in the detectors optical absorption characteristics improving the responsivity of the device. The proposed strain-induced engineering of the electronic and optical properties of the stacked 2D crystal materials allows tuning of the optoelectronic performance of vdWs devices for high-performance and low-power consumption applications for applications like wearable sensors and flexible electro-optic circuits., Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures

Topological insulators have shown great potential for future optoelectronic technology due to their extraordinary optical and electrical properties. Photodetectors, as one of the most widely used optoelectronic devices, are crucial for sensing, imaging, communication, and optical computing systems to convert optical signals to electrical signals. Here we experimentally show a novel combination of topological insulators (TIs) and transition metal chalcogenides (TMDs) based self-powered photodetectors with ultra-low dark current and high sensitivity. The photodetector formed by a MoS2/Sb2Te3 heterogeneous junction exhibits a low dark current of 2.4 pA at zero bias and 1.2 nA at 1V. It shows a high photoresponsivity of > 150 mA W-1 at zero bias and rectification of 3 times at an externally applied bias voltage of 1V. The excellent performance of the proposed photodetector with its innovative material combination of TMDs and TIs paves the way for the development of novel high-performance optoelectronic devices. The TIs/TMDs transfer used to form the heterojunction is simple to incorporate into on-chip waveguide systems, enabling future applications on highly integrated photonic circuits., Comment: 8 Pages, 3 figures

We report thorough measurements of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) running along nearly perfect air-gold interfaces formed by atomically flat surfaces of chemically synthesized gold monocrystals. By means of amplitude- and phase-resolved near-field microscopy, we obtain their propagation length and effective mode index at visible wavelengths (532, 594, 632.8, 729, and 800 nm). The measured values are compared with the values obtained from the dielectric functions of gold that are reported in literature. Importantly, a reported dielectric function of monocrystalline gold implies $\sim 1.5$ times shorter propagation lengths than those observed in our experiments, whereas a dielectric function reported for properly fabricated polycrystalline gold leads to SPP propagation lengths matching our results. We argue that the SPP propagation lengths measured in our experiments signify the ultimate limit of optical losses in gold, encouraging further comprehensive characterization of optical material properties of pure gold as well as other plasmonic materials.

Cathodoluminescence spectroscopy in conjunction with second-order auto-correlation measurements of $g_2(\tau)$ allows to extensively study the synchronization of quantum light sources in low-dimensional structures. Co-existing excitons in two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers provide a great source of identical quantum emitters which can be simultaneously excited by an electron. In this article, we demonstrate large photon bunching with $g_2(0)$ up to $156\pm16$ of a tungsten disulfide monolayer, exhibiting a strong dependence on the electron-beam current density. To further improve the excitation synchronization and the electron-emitter interaction, we show exemplary that the careful selection of a simple and compact geometry -- a thin, monocrystalline gold nanodisk -- can be used to realize a record-high bunching $g_2(0)$ of up to $2152\pm236$. This approach to control the electron excitation of excitons in a \ce{WS2} monolayer allows for the synchronization of quantum emitters in an ensemble, which is important to further advance quantum information processing and computing technologies., Comment: Supporting information is available upon request to authors

Optical metasurfaces have been extensively investigated, demonstrating diverse and multiple functionalities with complete control over the transmitted and reflected fields. Most optical metasurfaces are however static, with only a few configurations offering (rather limited) electrical control, thereby jeopardizing their application prospects in emerging flat optics technologies. Here, we suggest an approach to realize electrically tunable optical metasurfaces, demonstrating dynamic Fresnel lens focusing. The active Fresnel lens (AFL) exploits the electro-optic Pockels effect in a 300-nm-thick lithium niobate layer sandwiched between a continuous thick and nanostructured gold film serving as electrodes. We fabricate and characterize the AFL, focusing 800-900 nm radiation at the distance of 40 $\mathrm{\mu}$m with the focusing efficiency of 15 % and demonstrating the modulation depth of 1.5 % with the driving voltage of $\pm 10$ V within the bandwidth of $\sim\! 4$ MHz. We believe that the electro-optic metasurface concept introduced is useful for designing dynamic flat optics components., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures

Highly integrated active nanophotonics addressing both device footprint and operation speed demands is a key enabling technology for the next generation optical networks. Plasmonic systems have proven to be a serious contender to alleviate current performance limitations in electro-optic devices. Here, we demonstrate a plasmonic optical phased array (OPA) consisting of two 10-$\mu$m-long plasmonic phase shifters, utilized to control the far-field radiation pattern of two subwavelength-separated emitters for aliasing-free beam steering with an angular range of $\pm5^\circ$ and flat frequency response up to 18 GHz (with the potential bandwidth of 1.2 THz). Extreme optical and electrostatic field confinement with great spatial overlap results in high phase modulation efficiency ($V_{\pi}L=0.24\: \text{Vcm}$). The demonstrated approach of using plasmonic lithium niobate technology for optical beam manipulation offers inertia-free, robust, ultra-compact and high-speed beam steering., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures

Optical metasurfaces (OMSs) have shown unprecedented capabilities for versatile wavefront manipulations at the subwavelength scale, thus opening fascinating perspectives for next generation ultracompact optical devices and systems. However, to date, most well-established OMSs are static, featuring well-defined optical responses determined by OMS configurations set during their fabrication. Dynamic OMS configurations investigated so far by using controlled constituent materials or geometrical parameters often exhibit specific limitations and reduced reconfigurability. Here, by combining a thin-film piezoelectric micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) with a gap-surface plasmon based OMS, we develop an electrically driven dynamic MEMS-OMS platform that offers controllable phase and amplitude modulation of the reflected light by finely actuating the MEMS mirror. Using this platform, we demonstrate MEMS-OMS components for polarization-independent beam steering and two-dimensional focusing with high modulation efficiencies (~ 50%), broadband operation (~ 20% near the operating wavelength of 800 nm) and fast responses (< 0.4 ms). The developed MEMS-OMS platform offers flexible solutions for realizing complex dynamic 2D wavefront manipulations that could be used in reconfigurable and adaptive optical networks and systems., Comment: main manuscript (6 figures, 18 pages) followed by supplementary material (10 figures, 12 pages)

From the onset of high-speed optical communications, lithium niobite (LN) has been the material of choice for electro-optic modulators owing to its large electro-optic response, wide transparent window, excellent thermal stability and long-term material reliability. Conventional LN electro-optic modulators while continue to be the workhorse of the optoelectronic industry become progressively too bulky, expensive and power hungry to fully serve the needs of this industry rapidly progressing towards highly integrated, cost-effective and energy efficient components and circuits. Recently developed monolithic LN nanophotonic platform enables the realization of electro-optic modulators that are significantly improved in terms of compactness, bandwidth and energy efficiency, while still demanding relatively long, on the mm-scale, interaction lengths. Here we successfully deal with this challenge and demonstrate plasmonic electro-optic directional coupler switches consisting of two closely spaced nm-thin gold nanostripes monolithically fabricated on LN substrates that guide both coupled electromagnetic modes and electrical signals influencing their coupling and thereby enabling ultra-compact switching and modulatiofunctionalities. The extreme confinement of both slow-plasmon modes and electrostatic fields created by two nanostripes along with their nearly perfect spatial overlap allowed us to achieve a 90% modulation depth with 20-$\mu$m-long switches characterized by a electro-optic modulation efficiency of 0.3 Vcm. Our monolithic LN plasmonic platform enables ultra-dense integration of high-performance active photonic components, enabling a wide range of cost-effective optical communication applications demanding $\mu$m-scale footprints, ultrafast operation, robust design and high environmental stability., Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures

On-chip manipulating and controlling the temporal and spatial evolution of light is of crucial importance for information processing in future planar integrated nanophotonics. The spin and orbital angular momentum of light, which can be treated independently in classical macroscopic geometrical optics, appear to be coupled on subwavelength scales. We use spin-orbit interactions in a plasmonic achiral nano-coupler to unidirectionally excite surface plasmon polariton modes propagating in seamlessly integrated plasmonic slot waveguides. The spin-dependent flow of light in the proposed nanophotonic circuit allows on-chip electrical detection of the spin state of incident photons by integrating two germanium-based plasmonic-waveguide photodetectors. Consequently, our device serves as a compact ($\sim$ 6 $\times$ 18 $\mu$m$^2$) electrical sensor for photonic spin Hall dynamics. The demonstrated configuration opens new avenues for developing highly-integrated polarization-controlled optical devices that would exploit the spin-degree of freedom for manipulating and controlling subwavelength optical modes in nanophotonic systems., Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures

Miniaturization of functional optical devices and circuits is a key prerequisite for a myriad of applications ranging from biosensing to quantum information processing. This development has considerably been spurred by rapid developments within plasmonics exploiting its unprecedented ability to squeeze light into subwavelength scale. In this study, we investigate on-chip plasmonic systems allowing for synchronous excitation of multiple inputs and examine the interference between two adjacent excited channels. We present a branchless interferometer consisting of two parallel plasmonic waveguides that can be either selectively or coherently excited via ultra-compact antenna couplers. The total coupling efficiency is quantitatively characterized in a systematic manner and shown to exceed 15% for small waveguide separations, with the power distribution between the two waveguides being efficiently and dynamically shaped by adjusting the incident beam position. The presented design principle can readily be extended to other configurations, giving new perspectives for highly dense integrated plasmonic circuitry, optoelectronic devices, and sensing applications., Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures