Optically levitated nanodiamonds with nitrogen‐vacancy centers promise a high‐quality hybrid spin‐optomechanical system. However, the trapped nanodiamond absorbs energy from laser beams and causes thermal damage in vacuum. It is proposed here to solve the problem by trapping a composite particle (a nanodiamond core coated with a less absorptive silica shell) at the center of strongly focused doughnut‐shaped laser beams. Systematical study on the trapping stability, heat absorption, and oscillation frequency concludes that the azimuthally polarized Gaussian beam and the linearly polarized Laguerre‐Gaussian beam LG03 are the optimal choices. With our proposal, particles with strong absorption coefficients can be trapped without obvious heating and, thus, the spin‐optomechanical system based on levitated nanodiamonds are made possible in high vacuum with the present experimental techniques.
An ultrathin Huygens metasurface is proposed to manipulate orthogonally polarized transmitted waves independently. The Huygens metasurface consists of two layers of dielectric substrates and three layers of artificial metallic structures with ultrathin electric thickness. In physics, two orthogonal electric dipoles and two orthogonal magnetic dipoles are supported by each unit cell of the metasurface, which enable the complete control of phase distributions in both vertical and horizontal directions. Based on this feature, a polarization beam splitter with large splitting angle is designed and fabricated to demonstrate the capability and flexibility of the proposed Huygens metasurface. The numerical simulations and measurement results have a good match, indicating the good performance on independent controls of orthogonally polarized transmitted waves.
Following Mie theory, nanoparticles made of a high‐refractive‐index dielectric, such as silicon, exhibit a resonator‐like behavior and very rich resonance spectra. Which electric or magnetic particle mode is excited depends on the wavelength, the refractive‐index contrast relative to the environment, and the geometry of the nanoparticle itself. In addition, the spatial structure of the impinging light field plays a major role in the excitation of the nanoparticle resonances. Here, it is shown that, by tailoring the excitation field, individual multipole resonances can be selectively addressed while suppressing the excitation of other particle modes. This enables a detailed study of selected individual resonances without interference by the other modes.
Here we report on the hybrid nanostructures where a single ZnS nanobelt was half‐covered with an aluminum (Al) film, which is an ideal platform for studying the second‐harmonic generation (SHG) enhancement effects of the Al coating. It was fabricated by the lift‐off process and allowed for the accurate comparison of the SHG intensity between the Al‐covered and the same bare ZnS nanobelt under consistent test conditions. The results indicate that the Al coating in the hybrid nanostructures not only confines the pumping laser in the ZnS effectively, but also concentrates the emitted SHG signal greatly, increasing the signal collection efficiency. By the combination of these two effects, ∼60 times enhancement of the SHG intensity is achieved at the optimized geometry size (width and thickness) of the ZnS nanobelts. The Al‐based hybrid nanostructures open up new possibilities for low‐cost, highly efficient and directional coherent nanolight sources at short wavelengths.
We uncover that the breaking point of the ‐symmetry in optical waveguide arrays has a dramatic impact on light localization induced by the off‐diagonal disorder. Specifically, when the gain/loss control parameter approaches a critical value at which ‐symmetry breaking occurs, a fast growth of the coupling between neighboring waveguides causes diffraction to dominate to an extent that light localization is strongly suppressed and the statistically averaged width of the output pattern substantially increases. Beyond the symmetry‐breaking point localization is gradually restored, although in this regime the power of localized modes grows upon propagation. The strength of localization monotonically increases with disorder at both broken and unbroken ‐symmetry. Our findings are supported by statistical analysis of parameters of stationary eigenmodes of disordered‐symmetric waveguide arrays and by analysis of dynamical evolution of single‐site excitations in such structures.
The broadband enhancement of single‑photon emission from nitrogen‐vacancy centers in nanodiamonds coupled to a planar multilayer metamaterial with hyperbolic dispersion is studied experimentally. The metamaterial is fabricated as an epitaxial metal/dielectric superlattice consisting of CMOS‐compatible ceramics: titanium nitride (TiN) and aluminum scandium nitride (AlxSc1‐xN). It is demonstrated that employing the metamaterial results in significant enhancement of collected single‑photon emission and reduction of the excited‐state lifetime. Our results could have an impact on future CMOS‐compatible integrated quantum sources.
Ever since the laser's invention, there has been great interest in increasing beam output power without detriment to its coherence. Despite great advances having been obtained through the use of a diverse range of approaches, steady‐state beam powers above ten kilowatts remain a significant challenge for solid‐state lasers due to the heightened impact of detrimental nonlinear effects such as thermal lensing. Multiplexing several lasers using beam combination represents a method for surpassing the power barriers of single lasers. Here we propose and demonstrate a novel approach to beam combination and power scaling based on Raman conversion in diamond. Power from multiple non‐collinear pump beams is efficiently transferred onto a single Stokes beam in a single‐pass amplifier. Using three mutually‐independent nanosecond pulsed beams from a free‐running‐linewidth 1064 nm laser, 69% of the total peak pump power of 6.7 kW was transferred onto a TEM00 Stokes seed pulse at 1240 nm in a 9.5 mm long diamond crystal. Compared to other beam combination techniques, diamond beam combination has advantages of relaxed constraints on pump beam mutual coherence, while enabling narrowband output. Thermal considerations for extending from low duty‐cycle to continuous wave operation and higher power levels are discussed.
We demonstrate a scheme incorporating dual‐coupled microresonators through which mode interactions are intentionally introduced and controlled for Kerr frequency comb (microcomb) generation in the normal‐dispersion region. Microcomb generation, repetition rate selection, and mode locking are achieved with coupled silicon nitride microrings controlled via an on‐chip microheater. The proposed scheme shows for the first time a reliable design strategy for normal‐dispersion microcombs and may make it possible to generate microcombs in an extended wavelength range (e.g. in the visible) where normal material dispersion is likely to dominate.
Dielectric metasurfaces are two‐dimensional structures composed of nano‐scatterers that manipulate the phase and polarization of optical waves with subwavelength spatial resolution, thus enabling ultra‐thin components for free‐space optics. While high performance devices with various functionalities, including some that are difficult to achieve using conventional optical setups have been shown, most demonstrated components have fixed parameters. Here, we demonstrate highly tunable dielectric metasurface devices based on subwavelength thick silicon nano‐posts encapsulated in a thin transparent elastic polymer. As proof of concept, we demonstrate a metasurface microlens operating at 915 nm, with focal distance tuning from 600 μm to 1400 μm (over 952 diopters change in optical power) through radial strain, while maintaining a diffraction limited focus and a focusing efficiency above 50%. The demonstrated tunable metasurface concept is highly versatile for developing ultra‐slim, multi‐functional and tunable optical devices with widespread applications ranging from consumer electronics to medical devices and optical communications.
We report complete spatial shaping (both phase and amplitude) of the second‐harmonic beam generated in a nonlinear photonic crystal. Using a collinear second‐order process in a nonlinear computer generated hologram imprinted on the crystal, the desired beam is generated on‐axis and in the near field. This enables compact and efficient one‐dimensional beam shaping in comparison to previously demonstrated off‐axis Fourier holograms. We experimentally demonstrate the second‐harmonic generation of high‐order Hermite–Gauss, top hats and arbitrary skyline‐shaped beams.
A novel approach to facilitate excitation and readout processes of isolated negatively charged nitrogen‐vacancy (NV) centers is proposed. The approach is based on the concept of all‐dielectric nanoantennas. It is shown that the all‐dielectric nanoantenna can significantly enhance both the emission rate and emission extraction efficiency of a photoluminescence signal from a single NV center in a diamond nanoparticle on a dielectric substrate. The proposed approach provides high directivity, large Purcell factor, and efficient beam steering, thus allowing an efficient far‐field initialization and readout of several NV centers separated by subwavelength distances.
We experimentally demonstrate an optically‐pumped III‐V/Si vertical‐cavity laser with lateral emission into a silicon waveguide. This on‐chip hybrid laser comprises a distributed Bragg reflector, a III‐V active layer, and a high‐contrast grating reflector, which simultaneously funnels light into the waveguide integrated with the laser. This laser has the advantages of long‐wavelength vertical‐cavity surface‐emitting lasers, such as low threshold and high side‐mode suppression ratio, while allowing integration with silicon photonic circuits, and is fabricated using CMOS compatible processes. It has the potential for ultrahigh‐speed operation beyond 100 Gbit/s and features a novel mechanism for transverse mode control.
Microresonator‐based Kerr frequency comb (microcomb) generation can potentially revolutionize a variety of applications ranging from telecommunications to optical frequency synthesis. However, phase‐locked microcombs have generally had low conversion efficiency limited to a few percent. Here we report experimental results that achieve conversion efficiency ( on‐chip comb power excluding the pump) in the fiber telecommunication band with broadband mode‐locked dark‐pulse combs. We present a general analysis on the efficiency which is applicable to any phase‐locked microcomb state. The effective coupling condition for the pump as well as the duty cycle of localized time‐domain structures play a key role in determining the conversion efficiency. Our observation of high efficiency comb states is relevant for applications such as optical communications which require high power per comb line.
Optical waveguide theory is an established part of optical physics. Yet only recently have fundamental phenomena such as spatial eigenmodes and principal modes been demonstrated experimentally. This work leverages recently developed techniques enabling detailed spatiotemporal characterisation of multimode fibre to provide new insights into the fundamentals of fibre propagation. This paper presents detailed analysis of all 420 of a fibre's principal modes and spatial eigenmodes and compares the similarity and differences between these two phenomena. It was found that even over very short lengths, the principal modes can not only significantly suppress modal dispersion but are also a more physically meaningful basis than spatial eigenmodes.
Traditional detour‐phase hologram is a powerful optical device for manipulating phase and amplitude of light, but it is usually not sensitive to the polarization of light. By introducing the light‐metasurface interaction mechanism to the traditional detour phase hologram, we design a novel plasmonic nano‐slits assisted polarization selective detour phase meta‐hologram, which has attractive advantages of polarization multiplexing ability, broadband response, and ultra‐compact size. The meta‐hologram relies on the dislocations of plasmonic slits to achieve arbitrary phase distributions, showing strong polarization selectivity to incident light due to the plasmonic response of deep‐subwavelength slits. To verify its polarization sensitive and broadband responses, we experimentally demonstrate two holographic patterns of an optical vortex and an Airy beam at p‐ and s‐polarized light with wavelengths of 532nm, 633nm and 780nm, respectively. Furthermore, we realize an application example of the meta‐hologram as a polarization multiplexed photonic device for multi‐channel optical angular momentum (OAM) generation and detection. Such meta‐holograms could find widespread applications in photonics, such as chip‐level beam shaping and high‐capacity OAM communication.
A novel scheme to multiply the repetition rate of a monolithic self‐mode‐locked laser for generating sub‐terahertz pulse sources is successfully demonstrated. A coated Yb:KGW crystal is designed to achieve a self‐mode‐locked operation at a repetition rate of 24 GHz with an average output power exceeding 1.0 W at a pump power of 4.8 W. A partially reflective mirror is utilized to combine with the output surface of the gain medium to constitute an external Fabry‐Perot cavity. It is theoretically and experimentally verified that adjusting the external cavity length to satisfy the commensurate condition can lead to the frequency spacing to be various order harmonics of the mode spacing of the monolithic cavity. The maximum pulse repetition rate of the laser output can be up to 216 GHz and the pulse duration is as short as 330 fs. More importantly, the overall characteristics of the first‐order temporal autocorrelation traces obtained by sequentially scanning the external cavity.length display an intriguing phenomenon of temporally fractional revivals, similar to the feature of spatial Talbot revivals.
The spatial coherence of organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs) is an important parameter that has gained little attention to date. Here, we present a method for making quantitative measurements of the spatial coherence of OLEDs using a Young's double‐slit experiment. The usefulness of the method is demonstrated by making measurements on a range of OLEDs with different emitters (iridium and europium complexes) and architectures (bottom and top emitting) and the fringe visibility is further manipulated by gratings embedded in external diffractive optical elements. Based on the experiments and simulation of the results, we quantitatively determine the spatial coherence lengths of several OLEDs and find them to be a few micrometers. A 60% increase in the spatial coherence length was observed when using a narrow bandwidth emitter and a metal‐coated grating.
Light is usually confined in photonic structures with a band gap or relatively high refractive index for broad scientific and technical applications. Here, a light confinement mechanism is proposed based on the photonic bound state in the continuum (BIC). In a low‐refractive‐index waveguide on a high‐refractive‐index thin membrane, optical dissipation is forbidden because of the destructive interference of various leakage channels. The BIC‐based low‐mode‐area waveguide and high‐Q microresonator can be used to enhance light–matter interaction for laser, nonlinear optical and quantum optical applications. For example, a polymer structure on a diamond membrane shows excellent optical performance that can be achieved with large fabrication tolerance. It can induce strong coupling between photons and the nitrogen–vacancy center in diamond for scalable quantum information processors and networks.
Silicon microring resonators very often exhibit resonance splitting due to backscattering. This effect is hard to quantitatively and predicatively model. This paper presents a behavioral circuit model for microrings that quantitatively explains the wide variations in resonance splitting observed in experiments. The model is based on an in‐depth analysis of the contributions to backscattering by both the waveguides and couplers. Backscattering transforms unidirectional microrings into bidirectional circuits by coupling the clockwise and counterclockwise circulating modes. In high‐Q microrings, visible resonance splitting will be induced, but, due to the stochastic nature of backscattering, this splitting is different for each resonance. Our model, based on temporal coupled mode theory, and the associated fitting method, are both accurate and robust, and can also explain asymmetrically split resonances. The cause of asymmetric resonance splitting is identified as the backcoupling in the couplers. This is experimentally confirmed and its dependency on gap and coupling length is further analyzed. Moreover, the wide variation in resonance splitting of one spectrum is analyzed and successfully explained by our circuit model that incorporates most linear parasitic effects in the microring. This analysis uncovers multi‐cavity interference within the microring as an important source of this variation.
The terahertz (THz) radiation from InGaN/GaN dot‐in‐a‐wire nanostructures has been investigated. A submicrowatt THz signal is generated with just ten vertically stacked InGaN quantum dots (QDs) in each GaN nanowire. Based on the experimental results and analysis, a single quantum wire is expected to generate an output power as high as 10 pW, corresponding to 1 pW per dot. These structures are among the most efficient three‐dimensional quantum‐confined nanostructures for the THz emission. By applying a reverse bias along the wires in a light‐emitting device (LED) consisting of such nanostructures, the THz output power is increased more than fourfold. Based on THz and photoluminescence (PL) experiments, the mechanism for the THz emission is attributed to dipole radiation induced by internal electric fields and enhanced by external fields.
