Search

Despite over 40 years' development of optical logic computing, the studies have been still struggling to support more than four operands, since the high parallelism of light has not been fully leveraged blocked by the optical nonlinearity and redundant input modulation in existing methods. Here, we propose a scalable multi-input optical programmable logic array (PLA) with minimal logical input, enabled by parallel spectrum modulation. By making full use of the wavelength resource, an eight-input PLA is experimentally demonstrated, and there are 2^256 possible combinations of generated logic gates. Various complex logic fuctions, such as 8-256 decoder, 4-bit comparator, adder and multiplier are experimentally demonstrated via leveraging the PLA. The scale of PLA can be further extended by fully using the dimensions of wavelength and space. As an example, a nine-input PLA is implemented to realize the two-dimensional optical cellular automaton for the first time and perform Conway's Game of Life to simulate the evolutionary process of cells. Our work significantly alleviates the challenge of extensibility of optical logic devices, opening up new avenues for future large-scale, high-speed and energy-efficient optical digital computing.

The increasing amount of data exchange requires higher-capacity optical communication links. Mode division multiplexing (MDM) is considered as a promising technology to support the higher data throughput. In an MDM system, the mode generator and sorter are the backbone. However, most of the current schemes lack the programmability and universality, which makes the MDM link susceptible to the mode crosstalk and environmental disturbances. In this paper, we propose an intelligent multimode optical communication link using universal mode processing (generation and sorting) chips. The mode processor consists of a programmable 4*4 Mach Zehnder interferometer (MZI) network and can be intelligently configured to generate or sort both quasi linearly polarized (LP) modes and orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes in any desired routing state. We experimentally establish a chip-to-chip MDM communication system. The mode basis can be freely switched between four LP modes and four OAM modes. We also demonstrate the multimode optical communication capability at a data rate of 25 Gbit/s. The proposed scheme shows significant advantages in terms of universality, intelligence, programmability and resistance to mode crosstalk, environmental disturbances and fabrication errors, demonstrating that the MZI-based reconfigurable mode processor chip has great potential in long-distance chip-to-chip multimode optical communication systems.

The integration density of photonic integrated circuits has been limited by light coupling between waveguides. Traditional approaches to layout the waveguide with high density are based on refractive index engineering to suppress the light coupling between waveguides. However, these methods mostly require sophisticated and sensitive structure design, thus lack universality. Herein, we propose high-density multi-mode-multi-core integrated photonic waveguides by inserting high-loss metal strips between waveguides. We have achieved a 10-spatial-channel multi-mode-multi-core waveguide with total occupying spacing of 6.6 um. The multi-mode waveguides have a close spacing of 400 nm. The proposed scheme has high fabrication tolerance, ultra-large bandwidth and good compatibility to the complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology. It can be applied to any integration platform, any working waveband and any operating mode, providing a universal solution for high-density photonic circuits.

Encircling an exceptional point (EP) in a parity-time (PT) symmetric system has shown great potential for chiral optical devices, such as chiral mode switching for symmetric and anti-symmetric modes. However, the chiral switching for polarization states has never been reported although chiral polarization manipulation has significant applications in imaging, sensing, and communication etc. Here inspired by the anti-PT symmetry, we demonstrate an on-chip chiral polarizer by constructing polarization-coupled anti-PT symmetric system for the first time. The transmission axes of the chiral polarizer are different for forward and backward propagation. A polarization extinction ratio of over 10 dB is achieved for both propagating directions. Moreover, a telecommunication experiment is performed to demonstrate the potential applications in polarization encoding signals. It provides a novel functionality for encircling-an-EP parametric evolution and offer a new approach for on-chip chiral polarization manipulation.

Thermo-optic microheater is indispensable in silicon photonic devices for smart and reconfigurable photonic networks. Much efforts have been made to improve the metallic microheater performance in the past decades. However, because of the metallic nature of light absorption, placing the metallic microheater very close to the waveguide for fast response is impractical and has not been done experimentally. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a metallic microheater placed very close to the waveguide based on parity-time (PT) symmetry breaking. The intrinsic high loss of metallic heater ensures the system will operate in the PT-symmetry-broken region, which guarantee the low loss of light in the silicon waveguide. Moreover, heating at a close range significantly reduces the response time. A fast response time of ~1 us is achieved without introducing extra loss. The insertion loss is only 0.1 dB for the long heater. The modulation bandwidth is 280 kHz, which is an order of magnitude improvement when compared with that of the mainstream thermo-optic phase shifters. To verify the capability of large-scale integration, a 1*8 phased array for beam steering is also demonstrated experimentally with the PT-symmetry-broken metallic heaters. Our work provides a novel design concept for low-loss fast-response optical switches with dissipative materials and offers a new approach to enhance the performance of thermo-optic phase shifters.

The valley-contrasting orbital magnetic moment of Bloch electrons allows the lifting of valley degeneracy by an out-of-plane magnetic field. We demonstrate that this leads to negative magnetoresistance, utilizing a gapped two-dimensional multi-valley model as an example. An intuitive physical picture in terms of the increased carrier density from a magnetic gating effect is proposed for this negative magnetoresistance. In particular, giant negative magnetoresistance is achieved after one of the two valleys is depleted by the magnetic field. This new mechanism of negative magnetoresistance is argued to be relevant in ionic-liquid gated gapped graphene with small effective mass.

In the study of the anomalous Hall effect, the scaling relations between the anomalous Hall and longitudinal resistivities play the central role. The scaling parameters by definition are fixed as the scaling variable (longitudinal resistivity) changes. Contrary to this paradigm, we unveil that the electron-phonon scattering can result in apparent temperature-dependence of scaling parameters when the longitudinal resistivity is tuned through temperature. An experimental approach is proposed to observe this hitherto unexpected temperature-dependence. We further show that this phenomenon also exists in the nonlinear Hall effect in nonmagnetic inversion-breaking materials and may help identify experimentally the presence of the side-jump contribution besides the Berry-curvature dipole., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, considerable change of the presentation in this version

Photonic signal processing is essential in the optical communication and optical computing. Numerous photonic signal processors have been proposed, but most of them exhibit limited reconfigurability and automaticity. A feature of fully automatic implementation and intelligent response is highly desirable for the multipurpose photonic signal processors. Here, we report and experimentally demonstrate a fully self-learning and reconfigurable photonic signal processor based on an optical neural network chip. The proposed photonic signal processor is capable of performing various functions including multichannel optical switching, optical multiple-input-multiple-output descrambler and tunable optical filter. All the functions are achieved by complete self-learning. Our demonstration suggests great potential for chip-scale fully programmable optical signal processing with artificial intelligence.

Surface plasmon polaritons have attracted varies of interests due to its special properties, especially in the polarization-controlled devices. Typically, the polarization-controlled devices include directional coupling, focusing lens and plasmonic vortex lens, and almost all of them are controlled by the input circularly polarized light or the linearly polarized light. We present a novel device that realize the functions of directional coupling and focusing with high polarization extinction ratio for arbitrary spin of input light. This device offers opportunities for polarization sensing, polarization splitting and polarization-multiplexed near-field images and surface plasmon holography in the future., Comment: First and second authors contributed equally to this work

Controlling the directionality of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) has been widely studied, while the direction of SPPs was always switched by orthogonal polarizations in the reported methods. Here, we present a scheme to control the directionality of SPPs by arbitrary spin polarizations. Extremely, the device can split two quite adjacent polarization components to two opposite directions. The versatility of the presented design scheme can offer opportunities for polarization sensing, polarization splitting and polarization-controlled plasmonic devices., Comment: First and second author contributed equally to this work

The function to measure orbital angular momentum (OAM) distribution of vortex light is essential for OAM applications. Although there are lots of works to measure OAM modes, it is difficult to measure the power distribution of different OAM modes quantitatively and instantaneously, let alone measure the phase distribution among them. In this work, we demonstrate an OAM complex spectrum analyzer, which enables to measure the power and phase distribution of OAM modes simultaneously by employing rotational Doppler Effect. The original OAM mode distribution is mapped to electrical spectrum of beating signals with a photodetector. The power distribution and phase distribution of superimposed OAM beams are successfully retrieved by analyzing the electrical spectrum. We also extend the measurement to other spatial modes, such as linear polarization modes. These results represent a new landmark of spatial mode analysis and show great potentials in optical communication and OAM quantum state tomography., Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures

We present a theoretical model to sufficiently investigate the optical rotational Doppler effect based on modal expansion method. We find that the frequency shift content is only determined by the surface of spinning object and the reduced Doppler shift is linear to the difference of mode index between input and output orbital angular momentum (OAM) light, and linear to the rotating speed of spinning object as well. An experiment is carried out to verify the theoretical model. We explicitly suggest that the spatial spiral phase distribution of spinning object determines the frequency content. The theoretical model makes us better understand the physical processes of rotational Doppler effect, and thus has many related application fields, such as detection of rotating bodies, imaging of surface and measurement of OAM light., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1507.04102

We theoretically investigate the optical rotational Doppler Effect using modal expansion method. We find that the frequency shift content is only determined by the surface of spinning object and the reduced Doppler shift is linear to the change of mode index. The theoretical model makes us better understand the physical processes of rotational Doppler Effect. It can provide theoretical guidance for many related applications, such as detection of rotating bodies, detection of OAM and frequency shift., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures

The layered transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have attracted considerable interest due to their unique electronic and optical properties. Here we report electric field induced strong electroluminescence in multi-layer MoS2 and WSe2. We show that GaN-Al2O3-MoS2 and GaN-Al2O3-MoS2-Al2O3-graphene vertical heterojunctions can be created with excellent rectification behaviour. Electroluminescence studies demonstrate prominent direct bandgap excitonic emission in multi-layer MoS2 over the entire vertical junction area. Importantly, the electroluminescence efficiency observed in multi-layer MoS2 is comparable to or even higher than that in monolayers, corresponding to a relative electroluminescence enhancement factor of >1000 in multi-layer MoS2 when compared to its photoluminescence. This striking enhancement of electroluminescence can be attributed to the high electric field induced carrier redistribution from low energy points (indirect bandgap) to high energy points (direct bandgap) of k-space, arising from the unique band structure of MoS2 with a much higher density of states at high energy points. The electric field induced electroluminescence is general for other TMDs including WSe2, and can provide a fundamental platform to probe the carrier injection, population and recombination in multi-layer TMDs and open up a new pathway toward TMD based optoelectronic devices., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures