“Typically, symmetry connotes harmony and beauty. But not in this case. We’ve developed technology – an asymmetric metawaveguide – that enables a weak control laser beam to manipulate a much more intense laser signal,” says Liang Feng, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University at Buffalo’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the study’s lead author.
The study – “Metawaveguide for Asymmetric Interferometric Light-Light Switching” – was published in the journal Physical Review Letters. It was co-authored by researchers at California Institute of Technology and the City University of New York.
The study reports that the metawaveguide – a tiny rectangular box made of silicon, the semiconducting material for computer chips – creates asymmetric reflections of the two beams of light, which enables the weaker beam to control the other beam.