| Citation: | WANG Ji-jin, JIANG Zhen-yu, SUN Jia-qing, LI Hui-zhe, ZHOU Zheng-yang, CHEN Jiang-yue, DAI Hong-wei, YUAN Jia-wei, ZHUANG Song-lin, CHENG Qing-qing. Non-reciprocal frequency transition with harmonic order doubling in spacetime crystals[J]. Chinese Optics. doi: 10.37188/CO.2025-0165
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Our work presents a spacetime crystal metasurface antenna based on substrate integrated waveguide (SIW). It addresses the limitations of traditional magnetic non-reciprocal devices, such as large volume, high cost, and significant losses. The proposed antenna enables compact, efficient, magnetless non-reciprocal radiation and beam manipulation. An FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array)-controlled PIN diode array is employed to implement equivalent dynamic traveling-wave modulation on the SIW surface. A dispersion model, combining Floquet-Bloch theory and the transfer matrix method, elucidates the dynamic dispersion characteristics and the harmonic mode selection mechanism in the time-varying system. Experimental results demonstrate that, under waveguide port excitation, the system generates multi-beam radiation governed by frequency-momentum mapping. In contrast, under free-space incidence conditions, a deterministic non-reciprocal spectral transition is observed, where the signals undergo frequency up-conversion according to a harmonic order-doubling rule. The device achieves a maximum non-reciprocal isolation of 17.9 dB, confirming the breaking of time-reversal symmetry in both the first- and higher-order harmonic channels. This work validates the effectiveness of SIW-based spacetime coding technology for constructing magnetless non-reciprocal devices, providing a promising technological approach for frequency conversion, unidirectional transmission, and pseudo-Doppler effects in next-generation intelligent wireless communication systems.
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