According to the report of the American Physicist Organization Network on May 3rd, scientists from the Joint Quantum Institute of America (JQI) have recently developed an all-optical switch with the lowest energy consumption. The new switch is expected to become the link between photonics and electronics, and scientists can work out a working optical communication protocol. The study was published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
The new switch can guide the beam from one direction to the other, the entire process takes only 120 picoseconds (120 trillionths of a second), and the energy consumption is only 90 ajoules (that is, 1 x 10-18 joules). The all-optical switch with the lowest energy consumption currently consumes only one-fifth of the power of the all-optical switch developed by Japan and one-hundredth of that of other all-optical switches. The scientists used near-infrared light with a wavelength of 921 nanometers and about 140 photons.
The core component of most electronic devices is a transistor, which is a solid-state semiconductor device in which a gate signal is applied to a nearby fine conductive path to open and close the transmission path of the information signal. In photonics, the solid-state device all-optical switch can open or close the passage of light through a nearby waveguide like a door; it can also turn on or off the beam in different directions like a router.
Experiments were conducted by Eddo Vaux and colleagues at the University of Maryland at the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). They used a quantum dot (equivalent to a gate) placed in a resonant cavity to create the all-optical switch. The resonant cavity is a photonic crystal with many small holes, allowing only a few light waves to pass through the crystal. Quantum dots consist of indium and arsenic, which are only 1 nanometer in size, making it possible for electrons moving inside them to emit light with incoherent wavelengths.
As the light travels along the nearby waveguide, some of the light enters the resonant cavity and interacts with the quantum dot. It is this interaction that changes the transmission characteristics of the waveguide. Although 140 photons need to generate switching behavior inside the waveguide, only 6 photons are actually done.
Previously developed all-optical switches can only operate using bulky nonlinear crystals and high input power. The new switch uses a single quantum dot and very low input power to obtain a very high nonlinear interaction. However, although its energy consumption is lower than the all-optical switch developed by Japan, the Japanese switch can operate at room temperature. The new switch can only work around 40 (-233.15 degrees Celsius).
The researcher of JQI, Ranoyue Bowes, said that the quantum dot switch is not yet an "optical transistor". At present, it can only use a low number of photon pulses to modulate a beam of light. He hopes to increase (decrease) open and close. The number of photons required for the resonant cavity.
However, Bowes also stressed that the new switch indicates that scientists can create a working, ultra-fast, low-power chip signal router. Bowes said: "The latest research shows that only six photons of energy can be used to perform switching tasks. No one has ever done this before; no one has previously developed an all-optical switch that consumes less than 100 AJ. This is a milestone in the field of basic physics." (Liu Xia)
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