Dissipative optical switch for coherent fibre networks with 100 THz bandwidth

Summary form only given. We provide the first demonstration of a high-bandwidth, low-intensity fiberized all-optical gate exploiting coherent absorption in a plasmonic metamaterial film. The fully packaged fiberized version of the switch has been tested to the bandwidth of 1 GHz while free-space versions of the gate have been shown to provide 100 THz bandwidth and to operate at arbitrarily low intensities. Our work illustrates how major bandwidth and energy challenges of optical telecommunications and information processing networks can be tackled by merging metamaterials and optical fibre technologies.