The concept of lumped optical nanoelements (or metactronics), wherein nanometer‐scale structures act as nanoinductors, nanocapacitors, and nanoresistors, has attracted a great deal of attention as a simple toolbox for engineering different nanophotonic devices in analogy with microelectronics. While recent studies of the topic have been predominantly focused on linear functionalities, nonlinear dynamics in microelectronic devices plays a crucial role and provides a majority of functions, employed in modern applications. Here, the metactronics paradigm is extended and nonlinear dynamical modalities are added to those nanophotonic devices that have never been associated with optical nanoantennas. Specifically, it is shown that nonlinear dimer nanoantennae can operate in the regimes of tristable and astable multivibrators as well as chaos generators. The physical mechanism behind these modalities relies on the Kerr‐type nonlinearity of nanoparticles in the dimer enhanced by a dipolar localized surface plasmon resonance. This allows one to provide a positive nonlinear feedback at moderate optical intensities, leading to the desired dynamical behavior via tuning the driving field parameters. The findings shed light on a novel class of nonlinear nanophotonic devices with a tunable nonlinear dynamical response.

中文翻译：

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非线性纳米光子电路：三稳态和非稳态多谐振荡器和混沌发生器

集总光学纳米元件（或超电子学）的概念作为一种简单的工具箱，类似于微电子学，用于工程化不同的纳米光子器件，其中纳米级结构充当纳米电感器，纳米电容器和纳米电阻器，引起了广泛的关注。虽然最近对该主题的研究主要集中在线性功能上，但微电子器件中的非线性动力学起着至关重要的作用，并提供了现代应用中使用的大多数功能。在这里，超电子学范式得到了扩展，并且非线性动力学模态被添加到了从未与光学纳米天线相关联的那些纳米光子器件中。具体地，显示出非线性二聚体纳米天线可以在三稳态和非稳态多谐振荡器以及混沌发生器的状态下工作。这些模态背后的物理机制取决于通过偶极局部表面等离子体激元共振增强的二聚体中纳米颗粒的Kerr型非线性。这样就可以在中等光强度下提供正的非线性反馈，从而通过调整驱动场参数来产生所需的动态行为。这些发现为一类具有可调非线性动力学响应的新型非线性纳米光子器件提供了启示。