Design and analysis of a metatronic balanced amplifier using epsilon-near-zero metamaterials and photonic crystals

We introduce an amplifier design based on epsilon-near-zero metamaterials and photonic crystals (PCs) suitable for the optical communication wavelength of 1.55 mu m. The active part of the amplifier consists of a gain medium sandwiched between gyroelectric layers made of metamaterials to provide the required nonreciprocity. The resulting gyroelectric layers have a permittivity close to zero, and to steer light into them, a substrate should be selected whose permittivity is defined based on dispersion equations. The active parts are embedded in a PC, providing impenetrable walls in the working wavelength. In addition, the PC can be used to finely tune the design and optimize amplifier parameters. The final metatronic amplifier has good characteristics and an adequate bandwidth for optical communication applications. Finally, a balanced amplifier based on the metatronic amplifier and a PC-based coupler is designed to show the capabilities of a metatronic circuit embedded further in PCs. (C) 2022 Optica Publishing Group