Controlling the optical response of a medium through suitably tuned coherent electromagnetic fields is highly relevant in a number of potential applications, from all-optical modulators to optical storage devices. In particular, electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is an established phenomenon in which destructive quantum interference creates a transparency window over a narrow spectral range around an absorption line, which, in turn, allows to slow and ultimately stop light due to the anomalous refractive index dispersion. Here we report on the observation of a new form of either induced transparency or amplification of a weak probe beam in a strongly driven silicon photonic crystal resonator at room temperature. The effect is based on the oscillating temperature field induced in a nonlinear optical cavity, and it reproduces many of the key features of EIT while being independent of either atomic or mechanical resonances. Such thermo-optically induced transparency (TOIT) will allow a versatile implementation of EIT-analogues in an integrated photonic platform, at almost arbitrary wavelength of interest, room temperature and in a practical, low cost and scalable system.
As an analogue of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), plasmon-induced transparency (PIT) has been realized both in plasmonic metamaterial and waveguide structures. Via near-field coupling within unit cells, PIT with broadband could be produced by plasmonic metamaterials, which, however, has not been realized in on-chip plasmonic waveguide structures. Here, we introduce broadband PIT based on a plasmonic metal-insulator-metal (MIM) waveguide system. Utilizing the direct coupling structure, PIT emerges based on an easy-fabricated structure without gap. By tuning coupling distance, th…
Developments in photonic chips have spurred photon based classical and quantum information processing, attributing to the high stability and scalability of integrated photonic devices [1, 2]. Optical nonlinearity [3] is indispensable in these complex photonic circuits, because it allows for classical and quantum light sources, all-optical switch, modulation, and non-reciprocity in ambient environments. It is commonly known that nonlinear interactions are often greatly enhanced in the microcavities [4]. However, the manifestations of coherent photon-photon interaction in a cavity, analogous to …
We report on the fabrication and characterization of photonic-based nanothermometers, a silicon photonic Bragg grating and photonic crystal cavity. When cladded with silicon dioxide layer the sensors have at least eight times better sensitivity compared to the sensitivity of conventional fiber Bragg grating sensors. We demonstrate that these photonic thermometers are a viable temperature sensing solution.
Suspended optical microresonators are promising devices for on-chip photonic applications such as radio-frequency oscillators, optical frequency combs, and sensors. Scaling up these devices demand the capability to tune the optical resonances in an integrated manner. Here, we design and experimentally demonstrate integrated on-chip thermo-optic tuning of suspended microresonators by utilizing suspended wire bridges and microheaters. We demonstrate the ability to tune the resonance of a suspended microresonator in silicon nitride platform by 9.7 GHz using 5.3 mW of heater power. The loaded opti…
We demonstrate temporal group delays in coherently-coupled high-Q multi-cavity photonic crystals, in an all-optical analogue to electromagnetically induced transparency. We report deterministic control of the group delay up to 4x the single cavity lifetime in our CMOS-fabricated room-temperature chip. Supported by three-dimensional numerical simulations and theoretical analyses, our multi-pump beam approach enables control of the multi-cavity resonances and inter-cavity phase, in both single and double transparency peaks. The standing-wave wavelength-scale photon localization allows direct sca…
Resistance thermometry is a time-tested method for taking temperature measurements. In recent years fundamental limits to resistance-based approaches spurred considerable interest in developing photonic temperature sensors as a viable alternative. In this study we demonstrate that our photonic thermometer, which consists of a silicon waveguide integrated with a Bragg grating, can be used to measure temperature changes over the range from 5 C to 160 C with a combined expanded uncertainty [k = 2 ; 95% confidence level] of 1.25 degree C. The computational modeling of the sensor predicts the reson…
The Casimir force, originating from vacuum zero-point energy, is one of the most intriguing purely quantum effects. It has attracted renewed interests in current field of nanomechanics, due to the rapid size decrease of on-chip devices. Here we study the optomechanically-induced transparency (OMIT) with a tunable Casimir force. We find that the optical output rate can be significantly altered by the vacuum force, even terminated and then restored, indicating a highly-controlled optical switch. Our result addresses the possibility of designing exotic optical nano-devices by harnessing the power…
On-chip measurement of thermo-optic coefficient (TOC) of samples along with on-chip temperature measurements can be used to compensate for thermal fluctuation induced noise in refractometry using integrated photonic sensors. In this article we demonstrate a device design and describe the method to extract TOCs of liquid samples using resonant wavelength shifts of a silicon microring resonator. The TOCs of three standard fluids; De-ionized water, Ethanol and Isopropanol, were determined using our sensor and show a good agreement with values reported in literature. A mechanism for tracking of on…
The on-chip broadband optical spectrometers which cover the entire tissue transparency window (λ=650-1050 nm) with high resolution are highly demanded for the miniaturized bio-sensing and bio-imaging applications. Here, we propose a novel type of spatial heterodyne Fourier transform spectrometer (SHFTS) integrated with a sub-wavelength grating coupler (SWGC) for the dual-polarization bandpass sampling on the Si3N4 platform. Through tuning the coupling angles with different polarization, we experimentally demonstrated the unprecedented broadband spectrum retrieval results with the overall bandw…
We report on the thermomechanical and thermal tuning properties of curved-mirror Fabry-Perot resonators, fabricated by the guided assembly of circular delamination buckles within a multilayer a-Si/SiO2 stack. Analytical models for temperature dependence, effective spring constants, and mechanical mode frequencies are described and shown to be in good agreement with experimental results. The cavities exhibit mode volumes as small as $\sim10λ^3$, reflectance-limited finesse $\sim3\times10^3$, and mechanical resonance frequencies in the MHz range. Monolithic cavity arrays of this type might be of…
Resistance thermometry provides a time-tested method for taking temperature measurements. However, fundamental limits to resistance-based approaches has produced considerable interest in developing photonic temperature sensors to leverage advances in frequency metrology and to achieve greater mechanical and environmental stability. Here we show that silicon-based optical ring resonator devices can resolve temperature differences of 1 mK using the traditional wavelength scanning methodology. An even lower noise floor of 80 microkelvin for measuring temperature difference is achieved in the side…
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…
Thermodynamic noise places a fundamental limit on the frequency stability of dielectric optical resonators. Here, we present the characterization of thermo-refractive noise in photonic-chip-based silicon nitride microresonators and show that thermo-refractive noise is the dominant thermal noise source in the platform. We employed balanced homodyne detection to measure the thermo-refractive noise spectrum of microresonators of different diameters. The measurements are in good agreement with theoretical models and finite element method simulations. Our characterization sets quantitative bounds o…
We report on a non-interacting technique for thermal characterization of fluids based on surface plasmon resonance interrogation. Using liquid volumes less than 20 micro liters we have determined the materials' thermo-optic coefficients with an accuracy of better than 10^{-5} 1/°C and demonstrated temperature sensing with an accuracy of 0.03 °C. The apparatus employs a low-power probe laser, requiring only a single wavelength, polarization and interrogation angle for accurate characterization. The device is particularly suited for precise diagnostics of liquids and gases within microfluidic sy…
We report the fabrication of single mode buried channel waveguides for the whole mid-infrared transparency range of chalcogenide sulphide glasses by means of direct laser writing. We have explored the potential of this technology by fabricating a prototype three-dimensional three-beam combiner for future application in stellar interferometry, which delivers a monochromatic interference visibility of 99.89% at 10.6 \mum, and an ultrahigh bandwidth (3-11 \mum) interference visibility of 21.3%. These results demonstrate that it is possible to harness the whole transparency range offered by chalco…
Chalcogenide glass (ChG) is an attractive material for integrated nonlinear photonics due to its wide transparency and high nonlinearity, and its capability of being directly deposited and patterned on Silicon wafer substrates. It has a singular Raman effect among amorphous materials. Yet, the Raman lasing performance in high quality and chip integrated ChG microresonators remains unexplored. Here, we demonstrate an engineered Raman lasing dynamic based on home developed photonic integrated high-Q ChG microresonators. With a quality factor above 10^6, we achieve the record-low lasing threshold…
Thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) is superior for integrated nanophotonics due to its outstanding properties in nearly all aspects: strong second-order nonlinearity, fast and efficient electro-optic effects, wide transparency window, and little two photon absorption and free carrier scattering. Together, they permit highly integrated nanophotonic circuits capable of complex photonic processing by incorporating disparate elements on the same chip. Yet, there has to be a demonstration that synergizes those superior properties for system advantage. Here we demonstrate such a chip that capitalizes …
Photonic integrated circuits are established as the technique of choice for a number of astronomical processing functions due to their compactness, high level of integration, low losses, and stability. Temperature control, mechanical vibration and acoustic noise become controllable for such a device enabling much more complex processing than can realistically be considered with bulk optics. To date the benefits have mainly been at wavelengths around 1550 nm but in the important Mid-Infrared region, standard photonic chips absorb light strongly. Chalcogenide glasses are well known for their tra…
We investigate the nonlinear optical response of suspended 1D photonic crystal nanocavities fabricated on a silicon nitride chip. Strong thermo-optical nonlinearities are demonstrated for input powers as low as $2\,μ\text{W}$ and a self-sustained pulsing regime is shown to emerge with periodicity of several seconds. As the input power and laser wavelength are varied the temporal patterns change in period, duty cycle and shape. This dynamics is attributed to the multiple timescale competition between thermo-optical and thermo-optomechanical effects and closely resembles the relaxation oscillati…
We demonstrate voltage-tunable thermo-optic bi- and tri-stability in silicon photonic microring resonators with lateral p-i-n junctions and present a technique for characterizing the thermo-optic transient response of integrated optical resonators. Our method for thermo-optic transient response measurement is applicable to any integrated photonics platform and uses standard equipment. Thermo-optic relaxation in encapsulated waveguides is found to be approximately logarithmic in time, consistent with the analytic solution for 2D heat diffusion. We develop a model for thermo-optic microring mult…
We propose an on-chip mid-infrared (MIR) photonic spectroscopy platform for aerosol characterization to obtain highly discriminatory information on the chemistry of aerosol particles. Sensing of aerosols is crucial for various environmental, climactic, warfare threat detection, and pulmonary healthcare applications. Further, there are a number of unintended situations for potential exposure to bioaerosols such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi. For instance, the current pandemic scenario of COVID-19 occurring across the world. Currently, chemical characterization of aerosols is performed using F…
The integration of miniaturized optical spectrometers into mobile platforms will have an unprecedented impact on applications ranging from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to mobile phones. To address this demand, silicon photonics stands out as a platform capable of delivering compact and cost-effective devices. The Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS) is largely used in free-space spectroscopy, and its implementation in silicon photonics will contribute to bringing broadband operation and fine resolution to the chip scale. The implementation of an integrated silicon photonics FTS (Si-FTS) mus…
We propose and analyze an on-chip all-optical dynamical tuning scheme for coupled nonlinear resonators employing a single control beam injected in parallel with a signal beam. We show that nonlinear Kerr response can be used to dynamically switch the spectral properties between "dark-state" and electromagnetically-induced transparency configurations. Such scheme can be realized in integrated optical applications for pulse trapping and delaying.
In quantum optics, orbital angular momentum (OAM) is very promising to achieve high-dimensional quantum states due to the nature of infinite and discrete eigenvalue, which is quantized by the topological charge of l. Here, a heralded single-photon source with switchable OAM modes is proposed and demonstrated on silicon chip. At room-temperature, the heralded single photons with 11 OAM modes (l=2~6, -6~-1) have been successfully generated and switched through thermo-optical effect. We believe that such an integrated quantum source with multiple OAM modes and operating at room-temperature would …
A tunable double optomechanically induced transparency (OMIT) with a squeezed field is investigated in a system consisting of an optomechanical cavity coupled to a charged nanomechanical resonator via Coulomb interaction. Such a double OMIT can be achieved by adjusting the strength of the Coulomb interaction, and observed even with a single-photon squeezed field at finite temperature. Since it is robust against the cavity decay, but very sensitive to some parameters, such as the environmental temperature, the model under our consideration can be applied as a quantum thermometer for precision m…
Photonic miniaturization requires seamless integration of linear and nonlinear optical components to achieve passive and active functions simultaneously. Among the available material systems, silicon photonics holds immense promise for optical signal processing and on-chip optical networks. However, silicon is limited to wavelengths above 1100 nm and does not provide the desired lowest order optical nonlinearity for active signal processing. Here we report the integration of aluminum nitride (AlN) films on silicon substrates to bring active functionalities to chip-scale photonics. Using CMOS-c…
We use laser light shaped by a digital micro-mirror device to realize arbitrary optical dipole potentials for one-dimensional (1D) degenerate Bose gases of 87Rb trapped on an atom chip. Superposing optical and magnetic potentials combines the high flexibility of optical dipole traps with the advantages of magnetic trapping, such as effective evaporative cooling and the application of radio-frequency dressed state potentials. As applications, we present a 160 $μ$m long box-like potential with a central tuneable barrier, a box-like potential with a sinusoidally modulated bottom and a linear conf…
We design, fabricate, and experimentally demonstrate a compact thermo-optic gate switch comprising a 3.78 um-long coupled L0-type photonic crystalmicrocavities on a silicon-on-insulator substrate. A nanohole is inserted in the center of each individual L0 photonic crystalmicrocavity. Coupling between identical microcavities gives rise to bonding and anti-bonding states of the coupled photonic molecules. The coupled photonic crystalmicrocavities are numerically simulated and experimentally verified with a 6 nm-wide flat-bottom resonance in its transmission spectrum, which enables wider operatio…
Controlling the interaction between localized optical and mechanical excitations has recently become possible following advances in micro- and nano-fabrication techniques. To date, most experimental studies of optomechanics have focused on measurement and control of the mechanical subsystem through its interaction with optics, and have led to the experimental demonstration of dynamical back-action cooling and optical rigidity of the mechanical system. Conversely, the optical response of these systems is also modified in the presence of mechanical interactions, leading to strong nonlinear effec…
Diamond cavity optomechanical devices hold great promise for quantum technology based on coherent coupling between photons, phonons and spins. These devices benefit from the exceptional physical properties of diamond, including its low mechanical dissipation and optical absorption. However the nanoscale dimensions and mechanical isolation of these devices can make them susceptible to thermo-optic instability when operating at the high intracavity field strengths needed to realize coherent photon--phonon coupling. In this work, we overcome these effects through engineering of the device geometr…
We use electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT) to probe the narrow electron-spin resonance of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond. Working with a multi-pass diamond chip at temperatures 6-30 K, the zero-phonon absorption line (637 nm) exhibits an optical depth of 6 and inhomogenous linewidth of ~30 GHz full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM). Simultaneous optical excitation at two frequencies separated by the ground-state zero-field splitting (2.88 GHz), reveals EIT resonances with a contrast exceeding 6% and FWHM down to 0.4 MHz. The resonances provide an all-optical probe of external electr…
We show how a strongly driven single-mode oscillator coupled to a first-order dynamical system gives rise to induced absorption or gain of a weak probe beam, and associated fast or slow light depending on the detuning conditions. We derive the analytic solutions to the dynamic equations of motion, showing that the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) like response is a general phenomenology, potentially occurring in any nonlinear oscillator coupled to first-order dynamical systems. The resulting group delay (or advance) of the probe is fundamentally determined by the system damping r…
Reconfigurability of integrated photonic chips plays a key role in current experiments in the area of linear-optical quantum computing. We demonstrate a reconfigurable multiport interferometer implemented as a femtosecond laser-written integrated photonic device. The device includes a femtosecond laser-written $4\times 4$ multiport interferometer equipped with 12 thermooptical phase shifters, making it a universal programmable linear-optical circuit. We achieve a record fast switching time for a single nested Mach-Zender interferometer of $\sim10$ ms and quantitatively analyse the reconfigurab…
Optical frequency comb generation in microresonators has attracted significant attention over the past decade, as it offers the promising potential for chip-scale optical frequency synthesis, optical clocks and precise optical spectroscopy. However, accessing temporal dissipative Kerr soliton (DKSs) is known to be severely hampered by thermal effects. Furthermore, due to the degeneracy of soliton existence range with respect to soliton number, deterministically accessing single soliton state is another challenge. Here, we demonstrate stable and deterministic single soliton generation in AlN-on…
We experimentally demonstrate thermo-optic locking of a semiconductor laser to an integrated toroidal optical microresonator. The lock is maintained for time periods exceeding twelve hours, without requiring any electronic control systems. Fast control is achieved by optical feedback induced by scattering centers within the microresonator, with thermal locking due to optical heating maintaining constructive interference between the cavity and the laser. Furthermore, the optical feedback acts to narrow the laser linewidth, with ultra high quality microtoroid resonances offering the potential fo…
Frequency combs based on nonlinear-optical phenomena in integrated photonics are a versatile light source that can explore new applications, including frequency metrology, optical communications, and sensing. We demonstrate robust frequency-control strategies for near-infrared, octave-bandwidth soliton frequency combs, created with nanofabricated silicon-nitride ring resonators. Group-velocity-dispersion engineering allows operation with a 1064 nm pump laser and generation of dual-dispersive-wave frequency combs linking wavelengths between approximately 767 nm and 1556 nm. To tune the mode fre…
Enhanced Photonic Chip Design via Interpretable Machine Learning Techniques
Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore（量子技术中心，新加坡国立大学）；School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Queensland（数学与物理学院，昆士兰大学）；Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems（澳大利亚研究理事会工程量子系统卓越中心）
Structured illumination microscopy (SIM) enables live cell, super-resolution imaging at high speeds. SIM uses sophisticated optical systems to generate pre-determined excitation light patterns, and reconstruction algorithms to enhance the resolution by up to a factor of two. The optical set-up of SIM relies on delicate free-space optics to generate the light patterns, and a high numerical aperture objective lens to project the pattern on the sample. These arrangements are prone to miss-alignment, often with high costs, and with the final resolution-enhancement being limited by the numerical ap…
Optical isolators are indispensible components in nearly all photonic systems as they help ensure unidirectionality and provide crucial protection from undesirable reflections. While commercial isolators are exclusively built on magneto-optic (MO) principles they are not readily implemented within photonic integrated circuits due to the need for specialized materials. Importantly, the MO effect is generally weak, especially at shorter wavelengths. These challenges as a whole have motivated extensive research on non-MO alternatives. To date, however, no alternative technology has managed to sim…
We demonstrate second order optical nonlinearity in a silicon architecture through heterogeneous integration of single-crystalline gallium nitride (GaN) on silicon (100) substrates. By engineering GaN microrings for dual resonance around 1560 nm and 780 nm, we achieve efficient, tunable second harmonic generation at 780 nm. The \{chi}(2) nonlinear susceptibility is measured to be as high as 16 plus minus 7 pm/V. Because GaN has a wideband transparency window covering ultraviolet, visible and infrared wavelengths, our platform provides a viable route for the on-chip generation of optical wavele…
