Spatiotemporal Terahertz Metasurfaces for Ultrafast All-Optical Switching with Electric-Triggered Bistability

Optoelectronic terahertz switching achieved by dynamically tuning metamaterials is viewed as a major breakthrough in promoting the advancement of terahertz technology. However, the main thrust toward the development of ultrafast switchable components and optical logic operations is still in a catch-up stage for progressively increasing information and communication demands. Here, a novel spatiotemporal metadevice is proposed for terahertz wave steering in multidimensional domains with ultrahigh spatial and ultrafast temporal manipulations. By spatially changing the interconnect architecture via the embedded vanadium dioxide bridges, the state of electromagnetically induced transparency resonance is switched between 1 and 0 states under electrical stimuli, exhibiting a typical 1 bit coding bistability with a long retention time. Furthermore, with the characteristic of writable/erasable logic operation, ultrafast photoswitching of each memorized state is manifested by delivering optical excitations. The high-speed temporal response of terahertz radiation exhibits an on-off-on switching cycle within 16 ps, owing to the defect-rich germanium photoactive layer. By leveraging both degrees of freedom in space and time domains, this multifunctional spatiotemporal metaphotonic device can upgrade and improve the current capabilities of optical computing, data storage, and ultrahigh-speed information processing, paving the way for a highly unexplored territory toward manipulations of light.

Automated summary

This study introduces a novel spatiotemporal metadevice for terahertz wave manipulation with ultra-high spatial and ultrafast temporal control, exhibiting bistability and erasable logic operations. By leveraging both spatial and temporal degrees of freedom, it lays the foundation for enhancing optical computing, data storage, and ultrahigh-speed information processing capabilities.