All-optical control of coherent perfect absorption via frequency conversion

Abstract:Coherent perfect absorption (CPA) extinguishes optical fields through interference and dissipation, but conventional implementations rely on material loss that is largely fixed after fabrication. Here we demonstrate all-optically controllable CPA based on frequency conversion in a periodically poled lithium niobate waveguide resonator. Pump-driven frequency conversion couples a resonant signal field at 1581 nm in the main system to a non-resonant environmental mode at 780 nm, creating a dynamically tunable effective loss channel. The nonlinear cavity acts as a tunable lossy beamsplitter without intrinsic material absorption. Under coherent two-sided signal injection, we observe up to 92 % absorption. We further introduce environment-assisted CPA by injecting an external field into the frequency-converted environmental mode, turning the environment from a passive loss reservoir into an addressable coherent control port. Our results establish a frequency-conversion-based platform for all-optical control of dissipation in CPA, combining pump-tunable loss with environment-assisted coherent control.

Optics (physics.optics); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

arXiv:2607.04682 [physics.optics]

(or arXiv:2607.04682v2 [physics.optics] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.04682 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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