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1. Ultra-high extinction ratio polarization beam splitter with extreme skin-depth waveguide

   https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.420824  

   Ahmed, Syed Z. ; Ahmed, Ishtiaque ; Mia, Md Borhan ; Jaidye, Nafiz ; Kim, Sangsik ( April 2021 , Optics Letters)

   In this Letter, we present a high extinction ratio and compact on-chip polarization beam splitter (PBS), based on an extreme skin-depth (eskid) waveguide. Subwavelength-scale gratings form an effectively anisotropic metamaterial cladding and introduce a large birefringence. The anisotropic dielectric perturbation of the metamaterial cladding suppresses the TE polarization extinction via exceptional coupling, while the large birefringence efficiently cross-couples the TM mode, thus reducing the coupling length. We demonstrated the eskid-PBS on a silicon-on-insulator platform and achieved an ultra-high extinction ratio PBS ($\approx <\#comment/>60\mathrm{d}\mathrm{B}$for TE and$\approx <\#comment/>48\mathrm{d}\mathrm{B}$for TM) with a compact coupling length ($\approx <\#comment/>14.5\text{µ<\#comment/>}\mathrm{m}$). The insertion loss is also negligible ($<<\#comment/>0.6\mathrm{d}\mathrm{B}$). The bandwidth is$><\#comment/>80$(30) nm for the TE (TM) extinction ratio$><\#comment/>20\mathrm{d}\mathrm{B}$. Our ultra-high extinction ratio PBS is crucial in implementing efficient polarization diversity circuits, especially where a high degree of polarization distinguishability is necessary, such as photonic quantum information processing.

    

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2. Efficient and compact thermo-optic phase shifter in silicon-rich silicon nitride

   https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.431757  

   Nejadriahi, Hani ; Pappert, Steve ; Fainman, Yeshaiahu ; Yu, Paul ( September 2021 , Optics Letters)

   The design, fabrication, and characterization of low-loss ultra-compact bends in high-index ($n=3.1$at$\mathrm{\lambda <\#comment/>}=1550\mathrm{n}\mathrm{m}$) plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition silicon-rich silicon nitride (SRN) were demonstrated and utilized to realize efficient, small footprint thermo-optic phase shifter. Compact bends were structured into a folded waveguide geometry to form a rectangular spiral within an area of$65\times <\#comment/>65\text{µ<\#comment/>}{\mathrm{m}}^2$, having a total active waveguide length of 1.2 mm. The device featured a phase-shifting efficiency of$8\mathrm{m}\mathrm{W}/\mathrm{\pi <\#comment/>}$and a 3 dB switching bandwidth of 15 KHz. We propose SRN as a promising thermo-optic platform that combines the properties of silicon and stoichiometric silicon nitride.

    

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3. Ultrafast laser inscription of asymmetric integrated waveguide 3  dB couplers for astronomical K-band interferometry at the CHARA array

   https://doi.org/10.1364/JOSAB.423727  

   Benoît, Aurélien ; Pike, Fraser A. ; Sharma, Tarun K. ; MacLachlan, David G. ; Dinkelaker, Aline N. ; Nayak, Abani S. ; Madhav, Kalaga ; Roth, Martin M. ; Labadie, Lucas ; Pedretti, Ettore ; et al ( August 2021 , Journal of the Optical Society of America B)

   We present the fabrication and characterization of 3 dB asymmetric directional couplers for the astronomical K-band at wavelengths between 2.0 and 2.4 µm. The couplers were fabricated in commercial Infrasil silica glass using an ultrafast laser operating at 1030 nm. After optimizing the fabrication parameters, the insertion losses of straight single-mode waveguides were measured to be$\sim <\#comment/>1.2\pm <\#comment/>0.5\mathrm{d}\mathrm{B}$across the full K-band. We investigate the development of asymmetric 3 dB directional couplers by varying the coupler interaction lengths and by varying the width of one of the waveguide cores to detune the propagation constants of the coupled modes. In this manner, we demonstrate that ultrafast laser inscription is capable of fabricating asymmetric 3 dB directional couplers for future applications in K-band stellar interferometry. Finally, we demonstrate that our couplers exhibit an interferometric fringe contrast of$><\#comment/>90\mathrm{\%<\#comment/>}$. This technology paves the path for the development of a two-telescope K-band integrated optic beam combiner for interferometry to replace the existing beam combiner (MONA) in Jouvence of the Fiber Linked Unit for Recombination (JouFLU) at the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) telescope array.

    

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4. Hybrid electro-optic modulator combining silicon photonic slot waveguides with high-k radio-frequency slotlines

   https://doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.411161  

   Ummethala, Sandeep ; Kemal, Juned N. ; Alam, Ahmed S. ; Lauermann, Matthias ; Kuzmin, Artem ; Kutuvantavida, Yasar ; Nandam, Sree H. ; Hahn, Lothar ; Elder, Delwin L. ; Dalton, Larry R. ; et al ( April 2021 , Optica)

   Electro-optic (EO) modulators rely on the interaction of optical and electrical signals with second-order nonlinear media. For the optical signal, this interaction can be strongly enhanced using dielectric slot–waveguide structures that exploit a field discontinuity at the interface between a high-index waveguide core and the low-index EO cladding. In contrast to this, the electrical signal is usually applied through conductive regions in the direct vicinity of the optical waveguide. To avoid excessive optical loss, the conductivity of these regions is maintained at a moderate level, thus leading to inherentRClimitations of the modulation bandwidth. In this paper, we show that these limitations can be overcome by extending the slot–waveguide concept to the modulating radio-frequency (RF) signal. Our device combines an RF slotline that relies on$\mathrm{B}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{T}\mathrm{i}{\mathrm{O}}_3$as a high-k dielectric material with a conventional silicon photonic slot waveguide and a highly efficient organic EO cladding material. In a proof-of-concept experiment, we demonstrate a 1 mm long Mach–Zehnder modulator that offers a 3 dB bandwidth of 76 GHz and a 6 dB bandwidth of 110 GHz along with a small$\mathrm{\pi <\#comment/>}$voltage of 1.3 V ($U_{\mathrm{\pi <\#comment/>}}L=1.3\mathrm{V}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{m}$). We further demonstrate the viability of the device in a data-transmission experiment using four-state pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM4) at line rates up to 200 Gbit/s. Our first-generation devices leave vast room for further improvement and may open an attractive route towards highly efficient silicon photonic modulators that combine sub-1 mm device lengths with sub-1 V drive voltages and modulation bandwidths of more than 100 GHz.

    

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5. Utilizing phase delays of an integrated pixel-array structure to generate orbital-angular-momentum beams with tunable orders and a broad bandwidth

   https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.396447  

   Song, Hao ; Zhao, Zhe ; Zhang, Runzhou ; Song, Haoqian ; Zhou, Huibin ; Pang, Kai ; Du, Jing ; Li, Long ; Liu, Cong ; Su, Xinzhou ; et al ( July 2020 , Optics Letters)

   We study the relationship between the input phase delays and the output mode orders when using a pixel-array structure fed by multiple single-mode waveguides for tunable orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) beam generation. As an emitter of a free-space OAM beam, the designed structure introduces a transformation function that shapes and coherently combines multiple (e.g., four) equal-amplitude inputs, with the$k$th input carrying a phase delay of$(k-<\#comment/>1)\mathrm{\Delta <\#comment/>}\mathrm{\phi <\#comment/>}$. The simulation results show that (1) the generated OAM order ℓ is dependent on the relative phase delay$\mathrm{\Delta <\#comment/>}\mathrm{\phi <\#comment/>}$; (2) the transformation function can be tailored by engineering the structure to support different tunable ranges (e.g., $l=\{-<\#comment/>1\},\{-<\#comment/>1,+1\},\{-<\#comment/>1,0,+1\}$, or$\{-<\#comment/>2,-<\#comment/>1,+1,+2\}$); and (3) multiple independent coaxial OAM beams can be generated by simultaneously feeding the structure with multiple independent beams, such that each beam has its own$\mathrm{\Delta <\#comment/>}\mathrm{\phi <\#comment/>}$value for the four inputs. Moreover, there is a trade-off between the tunable range and the mode purity, bandwidth, and crosstalk, such that the increase of the tunable range leads to (a) decreased mode purity (from 91% to 75% for$l=-<\#comment/>1$), (b) decreased 3 dB bandwidth of emission efficiency (from 285 nm for$l=\{-<\#comment/>1\}$to 122 nm for$l=\{-<\#comment/>2,-<\#comment/>1,+1,+2\}$), and (c) increased crosstalk within the C-band (from$-<\#comment/>23.7$to$-<\#comment/>13.2\mathrm{d}\mathrm{B}$when the tunable range increases from 2 to 4).

    

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