Nanoscale device precisely manipulates light

Significantly, the device can recognize specific kinds of polarized light and accordingly send the signal in one direction or another.

Described in the journal Science, the findings are said to offer a new way to precisely manipulate light at the subwavelength scale without damaging a signal that could carry data, making possible a new generation of on-chip optical interconnects that can funnel information from optical to electronic devices.

‘If you want to send a data signal around on a tiny chip with lots of components, then you need to be able to precisely control where it’s going,’ said co-lead author Balthasar Müller, a graduate student at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). ‘If you don’t control it well, information will be lost. Directivity is such an important factor.’

The coupler transforms incoming light into a wave called a surface plasmon polariton, a surface ripple in the sea of electrons that exists inside metals.