We report the design of nonreciprocal resonant transmission/reflection using a one-dimensional photonic crystal (1DPC) adjacent to the magneto-optical (MO) metal film. The nonreciprocal surface modes are found at the interface between the PC and MO metal within the forbidden band of native PC structure. Breaking time-reversal symmetry using external magnetic field gives rise of such unique nonreciprocal properties. Quantitatively understanding of nonreciprocal resonant optical transmission/reflection behavior is performed using an effective admittance-matching theory. With excitation of the nonreciprocal surface modes, light can transmit and be reflected in one-way. Such design offers promising potential in realizing the optical diode.
We show that nonreciprocal optical Bloch-like oscillations can emerge in transversely magnetized waveguide arrays in the presence of an effective index step between the waveguides. Normal modes of the system are shown to acquire different wavenumbers in opposite propagation directions. Significant differences in phase coherence and decoherence between these normal modes are presented and discussed. Non-reciprocity is established by imposing unequal vertical refractive index gradients at the substrate/core, and core/cover interfaces in the presence of transverse magnetization.
Photonic bandgap design is one of the most basic ways to effectively control the interaction between light and matter. However, the traditional photonic bandgap is always dispersive (blueshift with the increase of the incident angle), which is disadvantageous to the construction of wide-angle optical devices. Hypercrystal, that the photonic crystal with layered hyperbolic metamaterials (HMMs), can strongly modify the bandgap properties based on the anomalous wavevector dispersion of the HMM. Here, based on phase variation compensation between HMM and isotropic dielectric layers, we propose for…
A study of nonreciprocal transverse-spin angular-momentum-density shifts for evanescent waves in magneto-optic waveguide media is presented. Their functional relation to electromagnetic spin- and orbital-momenta is presented and analyzed. It is shown that the magneto-optic gyrotropy can be re-interpreted as the nonreciprocal electromagnetic spin-density shift per unit energy flux, thus providing an interesting alternative physical picture for the magneto-optic gyrotropy. The transverse spin-density shift is found to be thickness-dependent in slab optical waveguides. This dependence is traceabl…
We study, both analytically and numerically, disorder-induced localization of light in random layered structures with magnetooptical materials. The Anderson localization in such structures demonstrates nonreciprocal features in the averaged localization length and individual transmission resonances. We employ short-wavelength approximation where the localization effects are strong, and consider both the Faraday and Voigt magnetooptical geometries. In the Faraday geometry, the transmission is strongly nonreciprocal for the circularly polarized waves, whereas in the Voigt geometry, the nonrecipr…
Epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) metamaterial with the relative permittivity approaching zero has been a hot research subject in the past decades. The wave in the ENZ region has infinite phase velocity ($v=1/\sqrt{\varepsilonμ}$), whereas it cannot efficiently travel into the other devices or air due to the impedance mismatch or near-zero group velocity. In this paper, we demonstrate that the tunable index-near-zero (INZ) modes with vanishing wavenumbers ($k=0$) and nonzero group velocities ($v_\mathrm{g} \neq 0$) can be achieved in nonreciprocal magneto-optical systems. This kind of INZ modes has been…
We theoretically analyze surface magnetoplasmon modes in a compact circular cavity made of magneto-optical material under a static magnetic field. Such a cavity provides two different physical mechanisms for the surface wave to circulate in a unidirectional manner around the cavity, which offers more freedom to realize one-way surface wave. We also show the interaction between this one-way cavity and waveguides, through an example of a circulator, which lays the fundamental groundwork for potential nonreciprocal devices.
Nonreciprocal elements are a vital building block of electrical and optical systems. In the infrared regime, there is a particular interest in structures that break reciprocity because their thermal absorptive (and emissive) properties should not obey the Kirchhoff thermal radiation law. In this work, we break time-reversal symmetry and reciprocity in n-type doped magneto-optic InAs with a static magnetic field where light coupling is mediated by a guided-mode-resonator (GMR) structure whose resonant frequency coincides with the epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) resonance of the doped InAs. Using this s…
We theoretically explore the notion of nonreciprocal near-zone manipulation of electromagnetic fields within subwavelength plasmonic nanostructures embedded in magneto-optical materials. We derive an analytical model predicting a strong, magneto-optically induced time-reversal symmetry breaking of localized plasmonic resonances in topologically symmetric structures. Our numerical simulations of plasmon excitations reveal a considerable near-zone power flow rotation within such hybrid nanostructures, demonstrating nanoscale nonreciprocity. This can be considered as another mechanism for tuning …
Light propagates symmetrically in opposite directions in most materials and structures. This fact -- a consequence of the Lorentz reciprocity principle -- has tremendous implications for science and technology across the electromagnetic spectrum. Here, we investigate an emerging approach to break reciprocity that does not rely on magneto-optical effects or spacetime modulations, but is instead based on biasing a plasmonic material with a direct electric current. Using a 3D Green function formalism and microscopic considerations, we elucidate the propagation properties of surface plasmon-polari…
We propose a new class of compact integrated optical circulators providing a large isolation level while maintaining a straightforward technological feasibility. Their layout is based on a nonreciprocal radial Bragg cavity composed of concentric magneto-optical rings. The circulator ports are standard rib waveguides, butt-coupled to the cavity by cutting through its outer rings. The device is specifically designed for operation in a uniform external magnetic field. Using a coupled-mode description of the complete cavity/waveguide-port system, we explore the rich behaviour of cavity circulators…
Dual-polarization control of broadband nonreciprocal thermal radiation by combining local and nonlocal metasurfaces
The University of Hong Kong（香港大学）；State Key Laboratory of Optical Quantum Materials, The University of Hong Kong（香港大学光学量子材料国家重点实验室）；Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, MOE Key Laboratory for Power Machinery and Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学机械工程学院动力机械工程教育部重点实验室工程热物理研究所）；Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学电气与计算机工程系）；Key Laboratory of Terahertz Solid State Technology, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院上海微系统与信息技术研究所太赫兹固态技术重点实验室）；National Engineering Research Center of Electromagnetic Radiation Control Materials, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China（电子科技大学电磁辐射控制材料国家工程研究中心）
Photonic nonreciprocal components, such as isolators and circulators, provide highly desirable functionalities for optical circuitry. This motivates the active investigation of mechanisms that break reciprocity, and pose alternatives to magneto-optic effects in on-chip systems. In this work, we use optomechanical interactions to strongly break reciprocity in a compact system. We derive minimal requirements to create nonreciprocity in a wide class of systems that couple two optical modes to a mechanical mode, highlighting the importance of optically biasing the modes at a controlled phase diffe…
Magnetic Lifting of BIC Symmetry Protection Enables Nonreciprocal Beam Steering and Angular Information Encoding
School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology（华中科技大学机械科学与工程学院）；Advanced Quantum Architecture Laboratory (AQUA), Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL)（洛桑联邦理工学院先进量子架构实验室）
California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）；Resnick Sustainability Institute, California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院雷尼克可持续发展研究所）；Department of Physics, Imperial College London（伦敦帝国理工学院物理系）
We present a theoretical investigation of the lateral shift of an infrared light beam reflected from a magnetic film deposited on a non-magnetic dielectric substrate, taking into account the linear magneto-electric interaction in the magnetic film. We use the stationary phase method to evaluate the lateral shift. It is shown that the magneto-electric coupling leads to a six-fold enhancement of the lateral shift amplitude of a p-(s-) polarized incident beam reflected into a s-(p-) polarized beam. A reversal of the magnetization in the film leads to a nonreciprocal sign change of the lateral shi…
The magneto-optical effect breaks time-reversal symmetry, a unique property that makes it indispensable in nonreciprocal optics and topological photonics. Unfortunately, all natural materials have a rather weak magneto-optical response in the optical frequency range, posing a significant challenge to the practical application of many emerging device concepts. Here we theoretically propose a composite material system that exhibits an intrinsic magneto-optical response orders of magnitude stronger than most magneto-optical materials used today. This is achieved by tailoring the resonant interpla…
Localized crystallization of Ce:YIG thin films on Si using CO2 laser annealing for integrated nonreciprocal photonic device applications
National Engineering Research Centre of Electromagnetic Radiation Control Materials, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China（电磁辐射控制材料工程技术研究中心，电子科技大学）；State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin-Films and Integrated Devices, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China（电子薄膜与集成器件国家重点实验室，电子科技大学）
We demonstrate lasing into counter-propagating modes of a ring cavity using a gas of cold atoms as a gain medium. The laser operates under the usual conditions of magneto-optical trapping with no additional fields. We characterize the threshold behavior of the laser and measure the second-order optical coherence. The laser emission exhibits directional bistability, switching randomly between clockwise and counter-clockwise modes, and a tuneable nonreciprocity is observed as the atoms are displaced along the cavity axis.
Quantum entanglement, a key element for quantum information is generated with a cavity-magnomechanical system. It comprises of two microwave cavities, a magnon mode and a vibrational mode, and the last two elements come from a YIG sphere trapped in the second cavity. The two microwave cavities are connected by a superconducting transmission line, resulting in a linear coupling between them. The magnon mode is driven by a strong microwave field and coupled to cavity photons via magnetic dipole interaction, and at the same time interacts with phonons via magnetostrictive interaction. By breaking…
Nonreciprocal devices such as isolators and circulators are key enabling technologies for communication systems, both at microwave and optical frequencies. While nonreciprocal devices based on magnetic effects are available for free-space and fibre-optic communication systems, their on-chip integration has been challenging, primarily due to the concomitant high insertion loss, weak magneto-optical effects, and material incompatibility. We show that Kerr nonlinear resonators can be used to achieve all-passive, low-loss, bias-free, broadband nonreciprocal transmission and routing for application…
Spin and orbital angular momentum of light plays a central role in quantum nanophotonics as well as topological electrodynamics. Here, we show that the thermal radiation from finite-sized bodies comprising of nonreciprocal magneto-optical materials can exert a spin torque even in global thermal equilibrium. Moving beyond the paradigm of near-field heat transfer, we calculate near-field radiative angular momentum transfer between finite-sized nonreciprocal objects by combining Rytov's fluctuational electrodynamics with the theory of optical angular momentum. We prove that a single magneto-optic…
We demonstrate theoretically the existence of one-way Tamm plasmon-polaritons on the interface between magnetophotonic crystals and conducting metal oxides. In contrast to conventional surface plasmon-polaritons (SPPs), Tamm plasmon-polariton (TPPs) occur at frequencies above the bulk plasma frequency of the conducting materials, provided that the dispersion curves of such surface modes lie outside the light cone for the conducting oxides and simultaneously fall into the photonic band gap of the magnetophotonic crystal. The nonreciprocal properties of TPPs are caused by violation of the period…
Low-loss optical isolators and circulators are critical nonreciprocal components for signal routing and protection, but their chip-scale integration is not yet practical using standard photonics foundry processes. The significant challenges that confront integration of magneto-optic nonreciprocal systems on chip have made imperative the exploration of magnet free alternatives. However, none of these approaches have yet demonstrated linear optical isolation with ideal characteristics over a microscale footprint - simultaneously incorporating large contrast with ultralow forward loss - having fu…
Optical non-reciprocity, which breaks the symmetry between forward and backward propagating optical waves, has become vital in photonic systems and enables many key devices, such as optical isolators, circulators and optical routers. Most conventional optical isolators involve magneto-optic materials, but devices based on optical nonlinearities, optomechanically induced transparency and stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) have also been demonstrated. So far, however, they have only been implemented for linearly or randomly polarized LP01-like fundamental modes. Here we report a light-driven …
Magnetic-field-biased indium antimonide (InSb) is one of the most widely-discussed materials for supporting nonreciprocal surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), which have recently been shown to be topological. In this work, we provide a critical assessment of InSb as a magneto-optical SPP platform, and show that it is only viable under a narrow set of conditions.
The interplay of spin angular momentum and thermal radiation is a frontier area of interest to nanophotonics as well as topological physics. Here, we show that a thick planar slab of a nonreciprocal material, despite being at thermal equilibrium with its environment, can exhibit nonzero photon spin angular momentum and nonzero radiative heat flux in its vicinity. We identify them as the persistent thermal photon spin (PTPS) and the persistent planar heat current (PPHC) respectively. With a practical example system, we reveal that the fundamental origin of these phenomena is connected to spin-m…
Nonreciprocal (NOR) transmission with magneto-optical materials plays a critical role in a broad range of applications, such as optical isolation, all-optical signal processing, and integrated photonic circuits. The underlying mechanism is that a static magnetic field can break the time-reversal symmetry in the presence of magneto-optical materials. However, the typical NOR devices usually need a large size because the weak magneto-optical activity of materials. Here, our theoretical investigations show that the NOR transmission can be obtained in the one-dimensional photonic crystal with a ma…
Magneto-optical permittivity tensor spectra of undoped InSb, n-doped and p-doped InSb crystals were determined using the terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) and the Fourier transform far-infrared spectroscopy (far-FTIR). A Huge polar magneto-optical (MO) Kerr-effect (up to 20 degrees in rotation) and a simultaneous plasmonic behavior observed at low magnetic field (0.4 T) and room temperature are promising for terahertz nonreciprocal applications. We demonstrate the possibility of adjusting the the spectral rage with huge MO by increase in n-doping of InSb. Spectral response is modele…
Metamaterials with artificial optical properties have attracted significant research interest. In particular, artificial magnetic resonances in non-unity permeability tensor at optical frequencies in metamaterials have been reported. However, only non-unity diagonal elements of the permeability tensor have been demonstrated to date. A gyromagnetic permeability tensor with non-zero off-diagonal elements has not been observed at the optical frequencies. Here we report the observation of gyromagnetic properties in the near-infrared wavelength range in a magneto-plasmonic metamaterial. The non-zer…
Optical isolators are an important building block in photonic computation and communication. In traditional optics, isolators are realized with magneto-optical garnets. However, it remains challenging to incorporate such materials on an integrated platform because of the difficulty in material growth and bulky device footprint. Here, we propose an ultracompact integrated isolator by exploiting graphene's magneto-optical property on a silicon-on-insulator platform. The photonic nonreciprocity is achieved because the cyclotrons in graphene experiencing different optical spin exhibit different re…
We design sub-wavelength high-performing non-reciprocal optical devices using recently discovered magnetic Weyl semimetals. These passive bulk topological materials exhibit anomalous Hall effect which results in magnetooptical effects that are orders of magnitude higher than those in conventional materials, without the need of any external magnetic bias. We design two optical isolators of both Faraday and Voigt geometries. These isolators have dimensions that are reduced by three orders of magnitude compared to conventional magneto-optical configurations. Our results indicate that the magnetic…
Nonreciprocity and nonreciprocal optical devices play a vital role in modern photonic technologies by enforcing one-way propagation of light. Most nonreciprocal devices today are made from a special class of low-loss ferrites that exhibit a magneto-optical response in the presence of an external static magnetic field. While breaking transmission symmetry, ferrites fail to satisfy the need for miniaturization of photonic circuitry due to weak character of nonreciprocal responses at optical wavelengths and are not easy to integrate into on-chip photonic systems. These challenges led to the emerg…
Optical isolators and circulators are indispensable for photonic integrated circuits (PICs). Despite of significant progress in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platforms, integrated optical isolators and circulators have been rarely reported on silicon nitride (SiN) platforms. In this paper, we report monolithic integration of magneto-optical (MO) isolators on SiN platforms with record high performances based on standard silicon photonics foundry process and magneto-optical thin film deposition. We successfully grow high quality MO garnet thin films on SiN with large Faraday rotation up to -5900 de…
Wafer-scale monolithic integration of Ce:YIG films and magneto-optical isolators on silicon
National Engineering Research Centre of Electromagnetic Radiation Control Materials, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China（电磁辐射控制材料国家工程研究中心，电子科技大学）；Key Laboratory of Multi-spectral Absorbing Materials and Structures of Ministry of Education, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China（多光谱吸收材料与结构教育部重点实验室，电子科技大学）；Institute of Optics and Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院光电技术研究所）；HK Institute of Quantum Science and Technology, University of Hong Kong（香港量子科学研究所，香港大学）
