A study is conducted regarding the effects of particle size [Formula: see text] and interparticle separation [Formula: see text] on the electromagnetic (plasmon) coupling in a dimer of two identical metal nanospheres. The dimer states are modeled as the hybridized bonding and antibonding states of two isolated plasmon states, with the associated energies given in terms of the isolated plasmon energy ([Formula: see text], the coupling energy ([Formula: see text] and the overlap integral ([Formula: see text] of the constituent plasmonic fields. The resonance absorption energies of the isolated plasmon and the dimer in certain dielectric medium are calculated according to the Mie theory for incident light of parallel polarization along the dimer axis. The results are fitted with the bonding state energies of both Au and Ag nanosphere dimers for [Formula: see text] ranging within 10–20[Formula: see text]nm and x varied within [Formula: see text]–200[Formula: see text]nm in compliance with the restricted consideration of dipole absorption spectra. The excellent fits of the bonding state energies [Formula: see text] for the ranges of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] variations are consistently achieved with [Formula: see text] around 0.99 by a single function of the form [Formula: see text] where [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] vary with the nanosphere materials and the surrounding media considered. This result suggests the possible relation of the best fitted functional form [Formula: see text] with the underlying physical mechanism.

The introduction of avalanche photodetectors in optical interconnects can extend the unallocated optical budget while unleashing further opportunities to migrate to novel datacenter network architectures. The required high-voltage rail that biases the photodiodes would involve a specialized electronic circuitry but will be instead harvested directly at the optical layer, taking advantage of the dropped power during optical modulation at local transmitters. Rather than dumping light resulting from extinct space bits, we will collect this contribution and convert it to a high-voltage bias by means of a photovoltaic power conversion circuit that is shared among and powered from all constituent data lanes of the optical interconnect. We will experimentally demonstrate that this energy reclamation circuit can sustain the sourced current during avalanche photodetection whilst maintaining a bias rail at ~25V with continuity, as will be proven for up to 64 data lanes. We demonstrate an optical budget of ~30 dB for 10 Gb/s/lane transmission, with a reception penalty as small as 0.2 dB with respect to an electrically biased photoreceiver. We will further elaborate on the limitations linked to the proposed concept, such as in terms of dynamic range.

We experimentally demonstrate the simultaneous weighing and summation of two 23-nm spaced, frequency-coded spike trains with 100-ps spike width. Operation of the synaptic receptor at low BER is confirmed at 10 Gb/s information rate.

No abstract