Towards femtosecond on-chip electronics

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the use of 14 fs optical pulses to drive on-chip electronic circuits with up to 10 THz bandwidth, enabling femtosecond-scale electronics integration.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using nanoscale tunneling junctions and plasmonic effects to achieve ultrafast on-chip electronic signal generation from femtosecond optical pulses.

Findings

Electronic pulses up to 10 THz bandwidth generated

Femtosecond optical pulses drive nanoscale tunneling junctions

Potential for integrating femtosecond electronics in quantum circuits

Abstract

To combine the advantages of ultrafast femtosecond optics with an on-chip communcation scheme, optical signals with a frequency of several hundreds of THz need to be down-converted to coherent electronic signals of GHz or less. So far, this has not been achieved because of the impedance mismatch within electronic circuits and their overall slow response-time. Here, we demonstrate that 14 fs optical pulses in the near-infrared (NIR) can drive electronic on-chip circuits with a bandwidth up to 10 THz. The corresponding electronic pulses propagate in microscopic striplines on a millimeter scale. We exploit femtosecond photoswitches based on tunneling barriers in nanoscale metal junctions to drive the pulses. The non-linear ultrafast response is based on a combination of plasmonically enhanced, multi-photon absorption and quantum tunneling, and gives rise to a field emission of ballistic electrons propagating across the nanoscale junctions. Our results pave the way towards femtosecond electronics integrated in waferscale quantum circuits.