Tunable and controllable multi-channel time-comb absorber based on continuous photonic time crystals.

To date there have been many studies on multi-channel absorbers for conventional photonic crystals (PCs). However, the number of absorption channels is small and uncontrollable, which cannot satisfy applications such as multispectral or quantitative narrowband selective filters. To address these issues, a tunable and controllable multi-channel time-comb absorber (TCA) based on continuous photonic time crystals (PTCs), is theoretically proposed. Compared with conventional PCs with fixed refractive index (RI), this system forms a stronger local electric field enhancement in the TCA by absorbing externally modulated energy, resulting in sharp multi-channel absorption peaks (APs). Tunability can be achieved by adjusting the RI, angle, and time period unit (T) of the PTCs. Diversified tunable methods allow the TCA to have more potential applications. In addition, changing T can adjust the number of multi-channels. More importantly, changing the primary term coefficient of n(t) of PTC can control the number of time-comb absorption peaks (TCAPs) in multi-channels within a certain range, and the mathematical relationship between the coefficients and the number of multiple channels is summarized. This will have potential applications in the design of quantitative narrowband selective filters, thermal radiation detectors, optical detection instruments, etc.