Multiple actions of time-resolved short-pulsed metamaterials

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that short-pulsed temporal metamaterials can be used as building blocks for complex wave computations, expanding the design space for computational metamaterials beyond traditional spatial metasurfaces.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic approximate model for multiple actions of short-pulsed metamaterials and showcases their potential for complex wave processing tasks.

Findings

Model accurately predicts multiple actions of short-pulsed metamaterials.

Examples demonstrate capabilities for simple and complex wave operations.

Validation against rigorous numerical solutions confirms effectiveness.

Abstract

Recently, it has been shown that temporal metamaterials based on impulsive modulations of the constitutive parameters (of duration much smaller than a characteristic electromagnetic timescale) may exhibit a nonlocal response that can be harnessed so as to perform elementary analog computing on an impinging wavepacket. These short-pulsed metamaterials can be viewed as the temporal analog of conventional (spatial) metasurfaces. Here, inspired by the analogy with cascaded metasurfaces, we leverage this concept and take it one step further, by showing that short-pulsed metamaterials can be utilized as elementary bricks for more complex computations. To this aim, we develop a simple, approximate approach to systematically model the multiple actions of time-resolved short-pulsed metamaterials. Via a number of representative examples, we illustrate the computational capabilities enabled by this approach, in terms of simple and composed operations, and validate it against a rigorous numerical solution. Our results indicate that the temporal dimension may provide new degrees of freedom and design approaches in the emerging field of computational metamaterials, in addition or as an alternative to conventional spatially variant platforms.