All-optical switching of a microcavity repeated at terahertz clock rates

摘要

Semiconductor microcavities have proven to be essential to strongly confine light [1], thereby enhancing the interaction between light and matter to the point of manipulating quantum states of matter. To achieve dynamic control of these processes, one must approach their characteristic time scales in the picosecond range, corresponding to THz modulation rates [2,3]. While all-optical switching is essential as it allows sub-picosecond reversible control of the refractive index [4,5], the popular optical free carrier excitation mechanisms are too slow to repeatedly switch at THz rates.