Nonlinear optics of photonic hyper-crystals: optical limiting and hyper-computing

TL;DR

Photonic hyper-crystals, combining hyperbolic metamaterials and photonic crystals, enable deep subwavelength light localization and enhanced nonlinear interactions, promising advances in optical limiting and hyper-computing.

Contribution

This paper introduces the nonlinear optical properties of photonic hyper-crystals and proposes their application in optical limiting and hyper-computing schemes.

Findings

Enhanced nonlinear photon-photon interactions in hyper-crystals.

Potential for optical limiting applications.

Hyper-computing scheme based on light propagation in hyper-crystals.

Abstract

Photonic hyper-crystals combine the most interesting features of hyperbolic metamaterials and photonic crystals. Since the dispersion law of extraordinary photons in hyperbolic metamaterials does not exhibit the usual diffraction limit, photonic hyper-crystals exhibit light localization on deep subwavelength scales, leading to considerable enhancement of nonlinear photon-photon interaction. Therefore, similar to their conventional photonic crystal counterparts, nonlinear photonic hyper-crystals appear to be very promising in optical limiting and optical computing applications. Nonlinear optics of photonic hyper-crystals may be formulated in such a way that one of the spatial coordinates would play a role of effective time in a 2+1 dimensional optical spacetime describing light propagation in the hyper-crystal. Mapping the conventional optical computing onto nonlinear optics of photonic hyper-crystals results in a hyper-computing scheme, which may considerably accelerate computation time.