Metawaveguide for Asymmetric Interferometric Light-Light Switching

Light-light switching typically requires strong nonlinearity where intense laser fields route and direct data flows of weak power, leading to a high power consumption that limits its practical use. Here we report an experimental demonstration of a metawaveguide that operates exactly in the opposite way in a linear regime, where an intense laser field is interferometrically manipulated on demand by a weak control beam with a modulation extinction ratio up to approximately 60 dB. This asymmetric control results from operating near an exceptional point of the scattering matrix, which gives rise to intrinsic asymmetric reflections of the metawaveguide through delicate interplay between index and absorption. The designed metawaveguide promises low-power interferometric light-light switching for the next generation of optical devices and networks.