Dispersion coding of ENZ media via multiple photonic dopants

Abstract

Epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) media are opening up exciting opportunities to observe exotic wave phenomena. In this work, we demonstrate that the ENZ medium comprising multiple dielectric photonic dopants would yield a comb-like dispersion of the effective permeability, with each magnetic resonance dominated by one specific dopant. Furthermore, at multiple frequencies of interest, the resonant supercouplings appearing or not can be controlled discretely via whether corresponding dopants are assigned or not. Importantly, the multiple dopants in the ENZ host at their magnetic resonances are demonstrated to be independent. Based on this platform, the concept of dispersion coding is proposed, where photonic dopants serve as “bits” to program the spectral response of the whole composite medium. As a proof of concept, a compact multi-doped ENZ cavity is fabricated and experimentally characterized, whose transmission spectrum is manifested as a multi-bit reconfigurable frequency comb. The dispersion coding is demonstrated to fuel a batch of innovative applications including dynamically tunable comb-like dispersion profiled filters, radio-frequency identification tags, etc.

The multiple photonic dopants contained in an epsilon-near-zero medium can serve as non-interacting resonators, and offer an opportunity for the independent control of electromagnetic waves at various frequencies.