Ultrafast All-Optical Polarization Control in a Plasmonic Metasurface by Selective Hot-Electron Heating of Orthogonal Gold Nanorods
Abstract
Metamaterials tailor light's degrees of freedom through static designs, but sub-picosecond, all-optical control without sacrificing signal throughput remains challenging. Here, a metasurface is presented whose unit cell contains two independent, orthogonal and spectrally detuned Au nanorod resonators. A femtosecond pump polarized along either nanorod selectively heats its electrons, modulating one polarization channel while the other serves as an essentially unperturbed phase reference, turning a static wave retarder into an ultrafast, all-optically reconfigurable one. The transient response is computed by coupling a Three-Temperature Model, benchmarked against published experiments, with Finite-Difference Time-Domain simulations. Hot electrons damp and red-shift the pumped resonance, modulating the amplitude ratio and phase retardation of the two channels. In transmission at normal incidence and sub-mJ cm−2 fluence, a 45∘ probe undergoes changes of ≈10∘ in ellipticity and ≈15∘ in optical rotation within ≈100 fs (relaxation time ≈4 ps), while its transmittance (≈0.4) changes by at most ≈0.05. A second, delayed pump along the other nanorod raises these changes to ≈15∘ and ≈22∘ and, for a suitably polarized probe, cancels the intensity change of the first within ≈60 fs while the polarization stays changed. Selective all-optical control of independent resonators offers a practical route to transmissive ultrafast polarization control.
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BibTeX
@misc{matthaiakakis2026ultrafast,
title = {{Ultrafast All-Optical Polarization Control in a Plasmonic Metasurface by Selective Hot-Electron Heating of Orthogonal Gold Nanorods}},
author = {Nikolaos Matthaiakakis and Lea Teste and George Kakarantzas},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2607.02733},
eprint = {2607.02733},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.02733},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Ultrafast All-Optical Polarization Control in a Plasmonic Metasurface by Selective Hot-Electron Heating of Orthogonal Gold Nanorods
AU - Nikolaos Matthaiakakis
AU - Lea Teste
AU - George Kakarantzas
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/28
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2607.02733
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.02733
AB - Metamaterials tailor light's degrees of freedom through static designs, but sub-picosecond, all-optical control without sacrificing signal throughput remains challenging. Here, a metasurface is presented whose unit cell contains two independent, orthogonal and spectrally detuned Au nanorod resonators. A femtosecond pump polarized along either nanorod selectively heats its electrons, modulating one polarization channel while the other serves as an essentially unperturbed phase reference, turning a static wave retarder into an ultrafast, all-optically reconfigurable one. The transient response is computed by coupling a Three-Temperature Model, benchmarked against published experiments, with Finite-Difference Time-Domain simulations. Hot electrons damp and red-shift the pumped resonance, modulating the amplitude ratio and phase retardation of the two channels. In transmission at normal incidence and sub-mJ cm^−2 fluence, a 45^∘ probe undergoes changes of ≈10^∘ in ellipticity and ≈15^∘ in optical rotation within ≈100 fs (relaxation time ≈4 ps), while its transmittance (≈0.4) changes by at most ≈0.05. A second, delayed pump along the other nanorod raises these changes to ≈15^∘ and ≈22^∘ and, for a suitably polarized probe, cancels the intensity change of the first within ≈60 fs while the polarization stays changed. Selective all-optical control of independent resonators offers a practical route to transmissive ultrafast polarization control.
ER -