Plasmonic nanostructures with local temporal response: a platform for time-varying photonics

Abstract

This work is devoted to the development of an approach for implementation and designing time-varying media. A mechanism based on the use of plasmonic nanostructures with a reduced plasmon lifetime is proposed. It is shown that such nanostructures can be used to enhance the strength and speed of modulation of the refractive index ofnonlinear media. This is achieved through decreasing of the spectral dispersion of the real permittivity. Plasmonic materials with peculiar optical properties, such as flatdispersion in the near-infrared range, were synthesized. For this purpose, we prepared TiON thin films and performed thermal post-treatment for fine-tuning permittivity of TiON. It has been shown that the proposed materials allow one to achieve an ultrashort plasmon lifetime on the order of 0.1 fs, which is an order of magnitude shorter than in the case of traditional plasmonic materials.