Search

Polarization-entangled photon pairs are essential sources for photonic quantum information processing. However, generating entangled photon pairs with large detuning via spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) often requires complex configurations to compensate for phase matching. Here, we propose a simple and efficient scheme to generate polarization-entangled photon pairs based on type-0 SPDC in a thin-film lithium niobate waveguide with a single poling period. By utilizing the strong dispersion engineering capabilities of thin-film waveguides, we can achieve both degenerate and highly detuned entangled photon pairs. Furthermore, we demonstrate on-chip temporal compensation using an integrated waveguide structure. Our approach offers a compact and scalable solution for integrated quantum photonic circuits.

Enhancement and active control of light-matter interactions at the atomic scale is important for developing next-generation nanophotonic and quantum optical devices. Here, we demonstrate electric control of both excitonic strong coupling and electroluminescence by integrating semiconductor monolayers into a nanometer gap of electrically driven nanocube-on-mirror plasmonic nanocavities. Particularly, in a strongly-coupled system of nanocavity plasmons and WSe2 excitons, the ultra-strong electric field generated in the nanocavity gap enables a reversible modulation of the Rabi splitting between ~102 and 80 meV with a bias below 2.5 V. In the quantum tunnelling regime, by injecting carriers into a nanocavity-integrated WS2 monolayer, bias-controlled spectrally tunable electroluminescence from charged or neutral excitons is achieved with an external quantum efficiency reaching ~3.5%. These results underline practical approaches to electric control of atomic-scale light-matter interactions for applications including nanoscale light sources, ultrafast electro-optic modulation, quantum information processing and sensing.

Sub-cycle optical pulse is of great importance for ultrafast science and technology. While a narrower pulse can offer a higher temporal resolution, so far the pulse width has not reached the limit of half an optical cycle. Here we propose to break the half-cycle limit via inverse Compton scattering in a deep-subwavelength-confined infrared or THz optical driving field, which can be converted into a deep-sub-cycle (i.e., less than half a cycle) ultrafast pulse by relativistic electrons passing through. Quantitatively, by using a deep-subwavelength-confined 0.4-THz 1-ps pulsed driving field and a 3-MeV 1-fs electron bunch, we obtain a $\sim$ 0.1-cycle femtosecond pulse with a peak frequency of $\sim$ 26 THz ($\sim$ 38 fs in optical cycle) and a pulse width of $\sim$ 3.6 fs; with the same driving field and a 30-MeV 50-as electron bunch, we obtain a 0.17-cycle attosecond pulse with a peak frequency of $\sim$ 2.0 PHz ($\sim$ 500 as in optical cycle) and a pulse width of $\sim$ 86 as. Below the optical damage threshold of the field-confinement material, the single-pulse photon number can exceed $10^6$. Such pulses may open opportunities for studying light-matter interaction on the deep-sub-cycle level, and pave a way to unprecedented optical technology ranging from temporal super-resolution optical microscopy and spectroscopy to unconventional atom/molecule polarization and manipulation.

Two-dimensional single-crystal metals are highly sought after for next-generation technologies. Here, we report large-area (>10^4 {\mu}m2), single-crystal two-dimensional gold with thicknesses down to a single-nanometer level, employing an atomic-level-precision chemical etching approach. The ultrathin thickness and single-crystal quality endow two-dimensional gold with unique properties including significantly quantum-confinement-augmented optical nonlinearity, low sheet resistance, high transparency and excellent mechanical flexibility. By patterning the two-dimensional gold into nanoribbon arrays, extremely-confined near-infrared plasmonic resonances are further demonstrated with quality factors up to 5. The freestanding nature of two-dimensional gold allows its straightforward manipulation and transfer-printing for integration with other structures. The developed two-dimensional gold provides an emerging platform for fundamental studies in various disciplines and opens up new opportunities for applications in high-performance ultrathin optoelectronic, photonic and quantum devices.

Artificial visual systems (AVS) have gained tremendous momentum because of its huge potential in areas such as autonomous vehicles and robotics as part of artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years. However, current machine visual systems composed of complex circuits based on complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) platform usually contains photosensor array, format conversion, memory and processing module. The large amount of redundant data shuttling between each unit, resulting in large latency and high power consumption, which greatly limits the performance of the AVS. Here, we demonstrate an AVS based on a new design concept, which consists of hardware devices connected in an artificial neural network (ANN) that can simultaneously sense, pre-process and recognize optical images without latency. The Ag nanograting and the two-dimensional (2D) heterostructure integrated plasmonic phototransistor array (PPTA) constitute the hardware ANN, and its synaptic weight is determined by the adjustable regularized photoresponsivity matrix. The eye-inspired pre-processing function of the device under photoelectric synergy ensures the considerable improvement of the efficiency and accuracy of subsequent image recognition. The comprehensive performance of the proof-of-concept device demonstrates great potential for machine vision applications in terms of large dynamic range (180 dB), high speed (500 ns) and ultralow energy consumption per spike (2.4e(-17) J)., Comment: in journal under review

Parity-time (PT) symmetry and broken in micro/nano photonic structures have been investigated extensively as they bring new opportunities to control the flow of light based on non-Hermitian optics. Previous studies have focused on the situations of PT-symmetry broken in loss-loss or gain-loss coupling systems. Here, we theoretically predict the gain-gain and gain-lossless PT-broken from phase diagram, where the boundaries between PT-symmetry and PT-broken can be clearly defined in the full-parameter space including gain, lossless and loss. For specific micro/nano photonic structures, such as coupled waveguides, we give the transmission matrices of each phase space, which can be used for beam splitting. Taking coupled waveguides as an example, we obtain periodic energy exchange in PT-symmetry phase and exponential gain or loss in PT-broken phase, which are consistent with the phase diagram. The scenario giving a full view of PT-symmetry or broken, will not only deepen the understanding of fundamental physics, but also will promote the breakthrough of photonic applications like optical routers and beam splitters.

We report a new technique for the realization of second-order correlation ($g^2(\tau)$) measurement under low-repetition-rate pulsed excitation (1 kHz), with timing jitter calibrated to restore lateral $g^2(\tau)$ curves and determine $g^2(0)$. We use CdSe nanowire (NW) laser to demonstrate the jitter-calibrated $g^2(\tau)$ measurement, where $g^2(0)$ evolution shows the laser emission transition process. The exciting pulses are split into reference and excitation channels, which enables the jitter calibration when the exciting pulses have significant timing jitter and low repetition rate. After using the reference signals to calibrate and rearrange the single-photon signals, lateral $g^2(\tau)$ curves can be entirely restored, and $g^2(0)$ evolution is demonstrated from our method.

Nanoparticle-on-mirror plasmonic nanocavities, capable of extreme optical confinement and enhancement, have triggered state-of-the-art progress in nanophotonics and development of applications in enhanced spectroscopies and molecular detection. However, the optical quality factor and thus performance of these nanoconstructs are undermined by the granular polycrystalline metal films used as a mirror. Here, we report an atomically smooth single-crystalline platform for low-loss nanocavities using chemically-synthesized gold microflakes as a mirror. Nanocavities constructed using gold nanorods on such microflakes exhibit a rich structure of plasmonic modes, which are highly sensitive to the thickness of optically-thin (down to ~15 nm) microflakes. The atomically smooth single-crystalline microflakes endow nanocavities with significantly improved quality factor (~2 times) and scattering intensity (~3 times) compared with their counterparts based on deposited films. The developed low-loss nanocavities further allow for the integration with a mature platform of fiber optics, opening opportunities for realizing nanocavity-based miniaturized photonic devices with high performance., Comment: 38 pages, 5 figures

Plasmon decay via the surface or interface is a critical process for practical energy conversion and plasmonic catalysis. However, the relationship between plasmon damping and the coupling between the plasmon and 2D materials is still unclear. The spectral splitting due to plasmon-exciton interaction impedes the conventional single-particle method to evaluate the plasmon damping rate by the spectral linewidth directly. Here, we investigated the interaction between a single gold nanorod (GNR) and 2D materials using the single-particle spectroscopy method assisted with in situ nanomanipulation technique by comparing scattering intensity and linewidth together. Our approach allows us to indisputably identify that the plasmon-exciton coupling in the GNR-WSe2 hybrid would induce plasmon damping. We can also isolate the contribution between the charge transfer channel and resonant energy transfer channel for the plasmon decay in the GNR-graphene hybrid by comparing that with thin hBN layers as an intermediate medium to block the charge transfer. We find out that the contact layer between the GNR and 2D materials contributes most of the interfacial plasmon damping. These findings contribute to a deep understanding of interfacial excitonic effects on the plasmon and 2D materials hybrid.

Exceptional points (EPs) are exotic degeneracies of non-Hermitian systems, where the eigenvalues and the corresponding eigenvectors simultaneously coalesce in parameter space, and these degeneracies are sensitive to tiny perturbations on the system. Here we report an experimental observation of the EP in a hybrid quantum system consisting of dense nitrogen (P1) centers in diamond coupled to a coplanar-waveguide resonator. These P1 centers can be divided into three subensembles of spins, and cross relaxation occurs among them. As a new method to demonstrate this EP, we pump a given spin subensemble with a drive field to tune the magnon-photon coupling in a wide range. We observe the EP in the middle spin subensemble coupled to the resonator mode, irrespective of which spin subensemble is actually driven. This robustness of the EP against pumping reveals the key role of the cross relaxation in P1 centers. It offers a novel way to convincingly prove the existence of the cross-relaxation effect via the EP., Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures

The ability to generate a laser field with ultratight spatial confinement is important for pushing the limit of optical science and technology. Although plasmon lasers can offer sub-diffraction-confined laser fields, it is restricted by a trade-off between optical confinement and loss of free-electron oscillation in metals. We show here an all-dielectric nanolaser that can circumvent the confinement-loss trade-off, and offer a field confinement down to subnanometer level. The ultra-confined lasing field, supported by low-loss oscillation of polarized bound electrons surrounding a 1-nm-width slit in a coupled CdS nanowire pair, is manifested as the dominant peak of a TE0-like lasing mode around 520-nm wavelength, with a field confinement down to 0.23 nm and a peak-to-background ratio of ~32.7 dB. This laser may pave a way towards new regions for nanolasers and light-matter interaction.

A lithium niobate on insulator ridge waveguide allows constructing high-density photonic integrated circuits thanks to its small bending radius offered by the high index contrast. Meanwhile, the significant mode-field mismatch between an optical fiber and the single-mode lithium niobate waveguide leads to low coupling efficiencies. Here, we demonstrate, both numerically and experimentally, that the problem can be solved with a tapered single mode fiber of an optimized mode field profile. Numerical simulation shows that the minimum coupling losses for the TE and TM mode are 0.32 dB and 0.86 dB, respectively. Experimentally, though without anti-reflection coating, the measured coupling losses for TE and TM mode are 1.32 dB and 1.88 dB, respectively. Our technique paves a way for a broad range of on-chip lithium niobate applications., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures

Silicon photonics is being extended from the near-infrared (near-IR) window of 1.3-1.5 {\mu}m for optical fiber communications to the mid-infrared (mid-IR) wavelength-band of 2 {\mu}m or longer for satisfying the increasing demands in many applications. Mid-IR waveguide photodetectors on silicon have attracted intensive attention as one of the indispensable elements for various photonic systems. Previously high-performance waveguide photodetectors on silicon were realized for the near-IR window of 1.3-1.5 {\mu}m by introducing another semiconductor material (e.g., Ge, and III-V compounds) in the active region. Unfortunately, these traditional semiconductor materials do not work well for the wavelength of ~2 {\mu}m or longer because the light absorption becomes very weak. As an alternative, two-dimensional materials provide a new and promising option for enabling active photonic devices on silicon. Here black-phosphorus (BP) thin films with optimized medium thicknesses (~40 nm) are introduced as the active material for light absorption and silicon/BP hybrid ridge waveguide photodetectors are demonstrated with a high responsivity at a low bias voltage. And up to 4.0Gbps data transmission is achieved at 2{\mu}m., Comment: 20 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables

Electronic skin, a class of wearable electronic sensors that mimic the functionalities of human skin, has made remarkable success in applications including health monitoring, human-machine interaction and electronic-biological interfaces. While electronic skin continues to achieve higher sensitivity and faster response, its ultimate performance is fundamentally limited by the nature of low-frequency AC currents in electronic circuitries. Here we demonstrate highly sensitive optical skin (O-skin) in which the primary sensory elements are optically driven. The simple construction of the sensors is achieved by embedding glass micro/nanofibers (MNFs) in thin layers of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Enabled by the highly sensitive power-leakage response of the guided modes from the MNF upon external stimuli, our optical sensors show ultrahigh sensitivity (1870/kPa), low detection limit (7 mPa) and fast response (10 microseconds) for pressure sensing, significantly exceeding the performance metrics of state-of-the-art electronic skins. Electromagnetic interference (EMI)-free detection of high-frequency vibrations, wrist pulse and human voice are realized. Moreover, a five-sensor optical data glove and a 2x2-MNF tactile sensor are demonstrated. Our results pave the way toward wearable optical devices ranging from ultrasensitive flexible sensors to optical skins.

We demonstrate a dynamic surface plasmonic modulation of graphene-nanowire hybrid structures in visible light range, which was thought to be a tough task for graphene based field effect transistor modulator previously. Static modulation depth of as high as 0.07 dB/{\mu}m has been achieved experimentally. Carefully simulation indicates the strongly focused electromagnetic field and dramatically enhanced electric field at the interface between a silver NW and a graphene sheet are key roles for bringing the optical response of the device to the visible range. Furthermore, the modulation behaviors near the Dirac point of monolayer graphene and the singularity of gap-induced bilayer graphene are investigated., Comment: This paper has been withdrawn by the authors. The phenomena need to be further investigated and submitted for publication in a journal which require the unpublished status in any website

Tunable lasing from 578 nm to 640 nm is observed from a single CdSSe bandgap-graded alloy nanoribbon, by selecting the excited spot at room temperature. Though reabsorption is a serious problem to achieve lasing at short wavelength, multiple scatters on the nanoribbon form localized cavities, and thus realize lasing at different wavelengths. By increasing the excitation area, we also observe multicolour lasing from the same nanoribbon simultaneously.

We report on the fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) high-Q whispering gallery microcavities on a fused silica chip by femtosecond laser microfabriction, enabled by the 3D nature of femtosecond laser direct writing. The processing mainly consists of formation of freestanding microdisks by femtosecond laser direct writing and subsequent wet chemical etching. CO2 laser annealing is followed to smooth the microcavity surface. Microcavities with arbitrary tilting angle, lateral and vertical positioning are demonstrated, and the quality (Q)-factor of a typical microcavity is measured to be up to 1.07x10^6, which is currently limited by the low spatial resolution of motion stage used during the laser patterning and can be improved with motion stages of higher resolutions., Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures

In a recent comment [1], Masud Mansuripur presented some concerns with theoretical and experimental interpretations of She's paper [2], and concluded that She's conclusion is incorrect. We agree that, some of the She's work required further interpretation in detail. However,after careful investigation, we found that points raised in Mansuripur's comment are incomplete or incorrect,as explained below., Comment: 2 Pages

We propose a two-color scheme of atom guide and 1D optical lattice using evanescent light fields of different transverse modes. The optical waveguide carries a red-detuned light and a blue-detuned light, with both modes far from resonance. The atom guide and 1D optical lattice potentials can be transformed to each other by using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer to accurately control mode transformation. This might provide a new approach to realize flexible transition between the guiding and trapping states of atoms., Comment: 18 pages, 12 figures, 1 table