Tunable generation of entangled photons in a nonlinear directional coupler

The on‐chip integration of quantum light sources has enabled the realization of complex quantum photonic circuits. However, for the practical implementation of such circuits in quantum information applications, it is crucial to develop sources delivering entangled quantum photon states with on‐demand tunability. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate the concept of a widely tunable quantum light source based on spontaneous parametric down‐conversion in a simple nonlinear directional coupler. We show that spatial photon‐pair correlations and entanglement can be reconfigured on‐demand by tuning the phase difference between the pump beams and the phase mismatch inside the structure. We experimentally demonstrate the generation of split states, robust N00N states, various intermediate regimes and biphoton steering on a single chip. Furthermore we theoretically investigate other regimes allowing all‐optically tunable generation of all Bell states and flexible control of path‐energy entanglement. Such wide‐range capabilities of a structure comprised of just two coupled nonlinear waveguides are attributed to the intricate interplay between linear coupling and nonlinear phase matching. This scheme provides an important advance towards the realization of reconfigurable quantum circuitry.

     

Spatial solitons in optofluidic waveguide arrays with focusing ultrafast Kerr nonlinearity

We present an optofluidic nonlinear waveguide array that is fabricated by selectively filling several strands of a photonic crystal fiber with the liquid CCl(4), which exhibits a large focusing ultrafast Kerr nonlinearity. We demonstrate a power dependent formation of a spatial soliton in this novel optofluidic device. The large thermo-optical effect of liquids enables us to control the characteristics of the spatial soliton formation in these nonlinear structures. This opens the road toward flexible designs and the realization of a new class of optofluidic devices with complex nonlinear landscapes and novel effects.     

Tunable optofluidic aperture configured by a liquid-core/liquid-cladding structure

Miniaturized and tunable optical components, such as the waveguide, lens, and prism, have been of great interest for lab-on-chip systems. This Letter reports an optofluidic aperture stop formed by the liquid-core/liquid-cladding flow. The aperture size can be tuned accordingly by adjusting the flow rates. Manipulation of the aperture size allows control of the amount of light passing through the corresponding optical system as well as the angular aperture on the image side. This optofluidic aperture enables lab-on-chip optical systems to have a greater flexibility and more functionalities.     

All-polarization-maintaining figure-eight Er-fiber ultrafast laser with a bidirectional output coupler in the loss-imbalanced nonlinear optical loop mirror

In this Letter, we report on a novel architecture for a self-starting mode-locked figure-eight erbium-doped fiber laser using a loss-imbalanced nonlinear optical loop mirror(NOLM) with a bidirectional output coupler. An allpolarization-maintaining structure is adopted. A 2 × 2 optical coupler with a splitting ratio of 50:50 is used at the junction to form an NOLM. Another coupler with a splitting ratio of 10:90 is introduced at one end of the fiber loop. The 10:90 coupler plays two roles: power attenuator and bidirectional output coupler. This architecture can achieve both large modulation depth and good self-starting ability simultaneously. With this architecture,the self-starting mode-locking operation is achieved easily with pump power above the threshold. The clockwise and counter-clockwise mode-locked output powers are 10.1 and 10.3 mW, respectively, with the repetition rate of3.63 MHz. The spectral bandwidths of the clockwise and counter-clockwise mode-locked output pulses are 7.4 and 2.9 nm, and the corresponding pulse widths of the direct outputs are 530.6 fs and 1.55 ps, respectively.     

Tunable photonic crystal fiber coupler based on a side-polishing technique

A tunable photonic crystal fiber (PCF) coupler, which couples part of the optical power in one PCF with that in another PCF, has been made by side polishing. We fabricated the PCF coupler by mating two side-polished PCFs. We achieved evanescent field coupling between the core modes of the two PCFs by using side polishing to bring the cores close to each other. By adjusting the mating angle between the two side-polished PCFs we obtained as much as 90% tunability in the coupling ratio. The spectrum of the coupling ratio was almost flat, with small ripples, over a 400-nm wavelength range.     

Quantum Zeno effect in a nonlinear coupler

The distortion of a spontaneous downconversion process caused by an auxiliary mode coupled to the idler wave is analyzed. In general, a strong coupling with the auxiliary mode tends to hinder the downconversion in the nonlinear medium. On the other hand, provided that the evolution is disturbed by the presence of a phase mismatch, the coupling may increase the speed of the downconversion. These effects are interpreted as being manifestations of quantum Zeno or anti-Zeno effects, respectively, and they are understood by using the dressed modes picture of the device. The possibility of using the coupling as a nontrivial phase-matching technique is pointed out.     

Nonclassical light in symmetric nonlinear directional coupler

We examine the quantum-statistical properties of light beams in a directional symmetric nonlinear coupler composed of one linear waveguide and two nonlinear waveguides operating by the second-harmonic generation. Linear and nonlinear mismatches are taken into account. Non-classical behaviour of single and compound modes in such a device is investigated. This work was partially supported by the Grant 202/96/0421 of the Czech Grant Agency and by the Complex Grant VS96028 of Czech Ministry of Education.     

Phase-induced switching in fiber nonlinear directional coupler

A numerical study of soliton switching characteristics and the maximum output coupling by the relative phase change of a control pulse is carried out for input powers, coupled coefficient and input soliton width. It is shown that input powers ratio, coupled coefficient and input soliton width play important roles in this mode of soliton switching and that these effects may lead to useful soliton switching if the relative phase of the control pulse is monitored judiciously.     

Q-factor assessment of SOA-based ultrafast nonlinear interferometer

The performance of the semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA)-based ultrafast nonlinear interferometer (UNI) gated by an ultra high speed pseudorandom binary sequence is theoretically analyzed. For this purpose, a comprehensive model formed by a set of equations that describe the gain and phase evolution inside a SOA deployed as the nonlinear element in an interferometric switch is appropriately applied to this particular configuration. By undertaking a detailed numerical simulation, the impact of the SOA and input data key parameters on the Q-factor is thoroughly investigated and assessed enabling to extract useful design rules for their proper selection so as to optimize this metric. The calculations confirm the experimental evidence that the main technical limitation is imposed by the SOA carrier lifetime, which must be reduced below the bit period in order to avoid the deleterious consequences of the pattern effect on the switched-out pulses. Provided that this condition is satisfied and the rest of the parameters fulfill their specified requirements, the output amplitude fluctuations can be effectively eliminated resulting in a high quality eye diagram and error-free operation. The adopted model can be exploited for studying more sophisticated all-optical circuits and subsystems of enhanced functionality that rely critically on the SOA-based UNI as switching module.     

基于石墨烯加载的不对称纳米天线对的表面等离激元单向耦合器

本文设计并数值研究了一种石墨烯加载的不对称金属纳米天线对结构.利用石墨烯费米能级的动态调控特性,实现了电控表面等离激元的单向传输.类似于传统的三明治型纳米天线结构,设计的不对称金属纳米天线对结构可以等效为两个共振的磁偶极子,由于磁偶极子辐射电磁波的干涉,将导致单向传输效应.通过计算腔中的电场分布,发现石墨烯的调谐能力与石墨烯区域的电场强度成正比关系.以上现象都可以通过等效电路模型进行理论解释.此外,该结构具有小尺寸、高效率、宽带宽和易于光电集成等优点,在未来的光子集成与光电子学领域将具有重要的应用.     

Critical power in a symmetric nonlinear directional coupler

An alternative theoretical analysis directed to obtaining a more accurate expression for the critical power in the symmetric nonlinear directional coupler, or other nonlinear, five-layer waveguiding structures, is reported. Our analysis works with the nonlinear supermodes of the waveguide, and it is presented as an improvement of the preceding study by Silberberg and Stegeman [1]. Numerical simulations comparing both techniques, and by means of the beam propagation method, are reported for a few cases. A set of three representative, power dependent parameters is proposed, in order to give a comprehensive view of the power flow between both branches in the device as a function of the excitation conditions.     

Solitary waves in a nonlinear oppositely directed coupler

The propagation of pulses in the system of two tunnel-coupled optical waveguides from optically nonlinear materials one of which has a negative refractive index, while the other one, positive, is investigated theoretically. The propagation of nonlinear waves in this structure is studied based on the model of coupled modes. For linear waves, this pair of coupled waveguides behaves as a mirror resulting in the change of direction of the energy flow upon penetration of radiation from one waveguide to the other. The solutions to the system of nonlinear equations describing the stationary propagation of the solitary wave, the gap soliton, in a particular direction are found. This soliton is formed by the coupled pair of wave packets each localized in the corresponding waveguide.     

Gain-induced soliton switching in fiber nonlinear directional coupler

With study for switching characteristics and output coupling ratio of fiber nonlinear directional couplers (NLDC), we found that the influence elements on the switching characteristics and output coupling ratio had gain of core 1 and 2, nonlinear coefficient of those, the input power and width of input soliton. We also found numerically that switching efficiencies were improved by controlling gain of core 1, different output coupling ratio would be obtained by controlling gain of core 1 or 2. And we can change the gain by changing pump power of the optical fiber amplifiers. From this, we also made fiber coupler which output coupling ratio was changeable.     

Adiabatic geometric phase in the nonlinear coherent coupler

We introduce the concept of geometric phase to the nonlinear coherent coupler. With considering the adiabatic change of the distance-dependent phase mismatch, we calculate the adiabatic geometric phase related to the supermode of the coupler analytically. We find that the phase depends on the input light intensity explicitly. In particular, in the low and high intensity limits, the phase equals half of the area on the Poincare sphere enclosed by the evolution loop of the system. At the critical intensity where different supermodes merge, the phase diverges, which can be considered as the signal of a continuous phase transition.     

Nonclassical properties of a contradirectional nonlinear optical coupler

We investigate the nonclassical properties of output fields propagated through a contradirectional asymmetric nonlinear optical coupler consisting of a linear waveguide and a nonlinear (quadratic) waveguide operated by second harmonic generation. In contrast to the earlier results, all the initial fields are considered weak and a completely quantum-mechanical model is used here to describe the system. Perturbative solutions of Heisenberg's equations of motion for various field modes are obtained using Sen–Mandal technique. Obtained solutions are subsequently used to show the existence of single-mode and intermodal squeezing, single-mode and intermodal antibunching, two-mode and multi-mode entanglement in the output of contradirectional asymmetric nonlinear optical coupler. Further, existence of higher order nonclassicality is also established by showing the existence of higher order antibunching, higher order squeezing and higher order entanglement. Variation of observed nonclassical characters with different coupling constants and phase mismatch is discussed.     

Tunable mid-infrared source from an ultrafast two-color Yb:fiber chirped-pulse amplifier

We present a tunable, ultrafast, mid-infrared source based on difference frequency between 16?μm and 20?μm from an ultrafast, two-color Yb:fiber chirped-pulse amplifier. We have recorded an average power of 1.5?mW at ～18 μm. We have improved the output power after the pre-amplifier by one order of magnitude. We present the simulation and experimental results to the pre-amplifier.     

Chirp controllable all-optical router in a nonlinear directional coupler

We analyzed the evolution of chirped optical pulses in a nonlinear directional coupler by coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations. It is shown that an optical pulses launched into one channel can couple out from either of the two channels of the nonlinear directional coupler, with the routing determined by the chirp of the pulse. This is different from the previous routing mechanism of the nonlinear directional coupler where routing is determined by the peak power of the pulse. Based on the chirp-dependent feature, all-optical router and switch could be implemented by the pulse chirp modulation.     

Tunable optical force on nonlinear graphene-wrapped nanoparticles

We investigate the optical force on the nonlinear graphene-wrapped nanoparticle by using the Maxwell's stress tensor together with the mean-field methods. We demonstrate the bistable optical force on the present nanoparticle which is due to the strong localized electric field in graphene at the plasmonic resonant wavelength. To further investigate the critical incident electric field for the up and down transistors, we find that the required switching-up threshold field is highly dependent on the permittivity of the nanoparticle, surrounding medium and Fermi energy instead of the relaxation time, with which one could achieve tunable nonlinear optical force on such graphene-wrapped nanoparticle to satisfy some practical purpose. Our results might supply an alternative way to manipulate nanoparticles and give the guideline for achieving the optical switching in nanoscale.