First All-Optical Photonic Time Crystal
Scientific news
Researchers have achieved the first all-optical realization of a photonic time crystal operating at terahertz frequencies. By using a plasmonic metamaterial whose optical properties are periodically and coherently modulated by an electromagnetic field, they experimentally observe the transition of the metamaterial into the photonic time crystal regime. This work opens new opportunities for the temporal control of light-matter interactions and plasmonic losses.
Access the related press release from École Polytechnique, the CNRS, and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) on the École polytechnique website.
The present study was carried out in the following CNRS laboratories :
- Laboratoire des Solides Irradiés (LSI, CNRS / CEA / École polytechnique)
- Jeunes équipes de l'Institut de Physique du Collège de France (JEIP, CNRS / Collège de France)
- Laboratoire Albert Fert (LAF, CNRS / Thales)
- Laboratoire de physique des interfaces et couches minces (LPICM, CNRS / École polytechnique)
References
Tingwen Guo, Jules Sueiro, Gian Marcello Andolina, Artem Levchuk, Stefano Ponzoni, Romain Grasset, Donald Monthe, Ian Aupiais, Dmitri Daineka, Javier Briatico, Thales VAG de Oliveira, Alexey Ponomaryov, Atiqa Arshad, Arjun Karimbana-Kandy, Gulloo Lal Prajapati, Igor Ilyakov, Jan-Christoph Deinert, Sebastian F. Maehrlein, Luca Perfetti, Marco Schiro, Yannis Laplace. Plasmonic metamaterial time crystal. Nature (2026).
DOI : 10.1038/s41586-026-10825-9
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Contact
Yannis Laplace
Enseignant-chercheur de l'École polytechnique au Laboratoire des Solides Irradiés (LSI)
Communication CNRS Physique