Light phase detection with on-chip petahertz electronic networks

Abstract

Ultrafast, high-intensity light-matter interactions lead to optical-field-driven photocurrents with an attosecond-level temporal response. These photocurrents can be used to detect the carrier-envelope-phase (CEP) of short optical pulses, and enable optical-frequency, petahertz (PHz) electronics for high-speed information processing. Despite recent reports on opticalfield-driven photocurrents in various nanoscale solid-state materials, little has been done in examining the large-scale electronic integration of these devices to improve their functionality and compactness. In this work, we demonstrate enhanced, on-chip CEP detection via optical-field-driven photocurrents in a monolithic array of electrically-connected plasmonic bow-tie nanoantennas that are contained within an area of hundreds of square microns. The technique is scalable and could potentially be used for shot-to-shot CEP tagging applications requiring orders-of-magnitude less pulse energy compared to alternative ionization-based techniques. Our results open avenues for compact time-domain, on-chip CEP detection, and inform the development of integrated circuits for PHz electronics as well as integrated platforms for attosecond and strong-field science.

Onset of space-charge effects in strong-field photocurrents from nanometric needle tips

“…Our experiments are conducted in the multi-electron emission regime with up to several hundred electrons per shot. Similar conditions were found for the nano-bowtie current experiments driven at MHz repetition rates [27]. Their study indirectly indicates 10 3 to 10 4 electrons per shot per nanostructure, based on the CEP-current per shot and nanostructure (0.11 electrons) and the ratio of CEP-current to total current (10 −4 to 10 −5 ).…”

“…electronics driven by optical fields on the PHz-scale. Based on plasmonic nano-bowtie antennas, the CEP-detection using currents [25][26][27], a potential PHz-scale diode [28] and recently on-chip field-resolved sampling of optical waveforms [29] have been demonstrated.…”

Electron Emission Regimes of Planar Nano Vacuum Emitters

“…On the other hand, planar NVC field-emitters could be easily incorporated into integrated circuits on a large scale. Moreover, thanks to their small size and low capacitance (down to tens of attofarads), they can be operated at petahertz-scale bandwidths, which makes them an ideal candidate for femtosecond electronics [15] and other optoelectronic applications that require sub-optical-cycle response times [16,17,18,19].…”

Optical‐Field‐Driven Electron Tunneling in Metal–Insulator–Metal Nanojunction

“…Previously reported ultrafast electron tunneling devices have suffered from relatively high vacuum barrier (commonly ≈ 5 eV), [ 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ] and when coupled to the need for access to the optical‐field driven regime only occurs at high field‐strength (>10 V nm ‐1 ), has resulted in photocurrent nonlinearities reducing to very low values, typically ≈2. [ 17 , 20 , 21 ] Although devices with this performance level have demonstrable potential in future petahertz electronics; specifically carrier‐envelope phase (CEP) detector, [ 14 , 22 ] this nonlinearity must be further increased in order to greatly enhance detection sensitivity.…”