Steerable optical antennas by selective heating

Abstract

Directional steerability can be obtained for an array of optical antennas through selective heating of the individual elements. Heating changes electrical conductivity of the heated element, which affects the phase of the generated currents. The variation in temperature can be obtained by modifying the biasing point of the individual elements of the array, which would allow fast reconfiguration. The numerical evaluation of the performance of an array of a reduced number of antennas (2 and 3) shows the feasibility of this approach.