Exploring transient modification of hyperbolic metamaterials using InAsSb-based semiconductor

Quantum photonics opens doors for applications in sensing, data transfer, and quantum computing. Application areas in many of these technologies require in some manner tunable single photon sources. Hyperbolic metamaterials, composed of metallic building blocks embedded in dielectric media control emission lifetime by modifying the photon density of states. However, no previous efforts have explored the transient modification of metamaterials to modulate emission. Antimony-based semiconductor hyperbolic metamaterials (SHMMs) offer a route to modulation of these resonances at the mid-infrared (IR) wavelength range, which would modulate emission. In this work, we demonstrate the ability to create an ultrafast hyperbolic momentum state in metallic InAsSb/dielectric GaSb stacks and explore the possibility of transient modification of metamaterials by controlling the optical properties of photon emission. If successful, this study will establish a new platform for deterministic single photon emission that can be integrable into opto-electronic platforms and dramatically advance optical quantum technologies. Properly engineered quantum well structures are grown by molecular beam epitaxy with Si-doping in order to convert the InAsSb layers from dielectric to metallic at IR frequencies. The carrier excitation scheme of the engineered hyperbolic stacks is investigated in a variety of excitation levels using pump–probe measurements. The photo-excited carriers in the structure with a metal fraction of ∼0.5 show a polarization dependent reflectivity change, which indicates a transient hyperbolic metamaterial state in the heterostructure induced by the pump laser.