Tunable Metasurface based Polarization-insensitive Electro-Optic Amplitude Modulator for Nanophotonic Systems

Electrooptic modulators are crucial elements in the photonic systems to encode electrical signal into optical carrier. However, realization of polarization-insensitive optical modulators with low power consumption remains a challenging task. In this study, we report a gap-plasmon resonance based electrically-tunable metasurface that can be operated with random polarization angles of incident optical signal. With 1.5 V external bias-voltage, we achieve ~15 dB extinction ratio at the telecommunication wavelength (i.e., 1550 nm) and a very low energy-consumption of 213 fJ/bit. Thus, the proposed device could find applications in the power-hungry nanophotonic systems.