To cope with the high bandwidth requirements of wireless applications¹, carrier frequencies are shifting towards the millimetre-wave and terahertz bands^2,3,4,5. Conversely, data is normally transported to remote wireless antennas by optical fibres. Therefore, full transparency and flexibility to switch between optical and wireless domains would be desirable^6,7. Here, we demonstrate a direct wireless-to-optical receiver in a transparent optical link. We successfully transmit 20 and 10 Gbit s⁻¹ over wireless distances of 1 and 5 m, respectively, at a carrier frequency of 60 GHz. Key to the breakthrough is a plasmonic mixer directly mapping the wireless information onto optical signals. The plasmonic scheme with its subwavelength feature and pronounced field confinement provides a built-in field enhancement of up to 90,000 over the incident field in an ultra-compact and complementary metal-oxide–semiconductor compatible structure. The plasmonic mixer is not limited by electronic speed and thus compatible with future terahertz technologies.

为了应对无线应用的高带宽需求¹，载波频率正在向毫米波和太赫兹频段^{2、3、4、5}转移。相反，数据通常通过光纤传输到远程无线天线。因此，在光域和无线域之间切换的完全透明性和灵活性将是可取的^6,7。在这里，我们演示了透明光链路中的直接无线到光接收器。我们成功传输了 20 和 10 Gbit s ^-1在 60 GHz 载波频率下，无线距离​​分别为 1 和 5 m。突破的关键是等离子体混合器，直接将无线信息映射到光信号上。具有亚波长特性和明显场限制的等离子体方案在超紧凑和互补金属氧化物半导体兼容结构中提供了在入射场上高达 90,000 的内置场增强。等离子体混合器不受电子速度的限制，因此与未来的太赫兹技术兼容。