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1. A 3 pJ/bit free space optical interlink platform for self-powered tetherless sensing and opto-spintronic RF-to-optical transduction

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-87885-6  

   Wheaton, Skyler ; Lopez-Dominguez, Victor ; Almasi, Hamid ; Cai, Jialin ; Zeng, Zhongming ; Khalili Amiri, Pedram ; Mohseni, Hooman ( April 2021 , Scientific Reports)

   Tetherless sensors have long been positioned to enable next generation applications in biomedical, environmental, and industrial sectors. The main challenge in enabling these advancements is the realization of a device that is compact, robust over time, and highly efficient. This paper presents a tetherless optical tag which utilizes optical energy harvesting to realize scalable self-powered devices. Unlike previous demonstrations of optically coupled sensor nodes, the device presented here amplifies signals and encodes data on the same optical beam that provides its power. This optical interrogation modality results in a highly efficient data link. These optical tags support data rates up to 10 Mb/s with an energy consumption of ~ 3 pJ/bit. As a proof-of-concept application, the optical tag is combined with a spintronic microwave detector based on a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ). We used this hybrid opto-spintronic system to perform self-powered transduction of RF waves at 1 GHz to optical frequencies at ~ 200 THz, while carrying an audio signal across (see Supplementary Data for audio files).

    

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2. Programmable photonic integrated meshes for modular generation of optical entanglement links

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41534-023-00708-6  

   Dong, Mark ; Zimmermann, Matthew ; Heim, David ; Choi, Hyeongrak ; Clark, Genevieve ; Leenheer, Andrew J. ; Palm, Kevin J. ; Witte, Alex ; Dominguez, Daniel ; Gilbert, Gerald ; et al ( April 2023 , npj Quantum Information)

   Large-scale generation of quantum entanglement between individually controllable qubits is at the core of quantum computing, communications, and sensing. Modular architectures of remotely-connected quantum technologies have been proposed for a variety of physical qubits, with demonstrations reported in atomic and all-photonic systems. However, an open challenge in these architectures lies in constructing high-speed and high-fidelity reconfigurable photonic networks for optically-heralded entanglement among target qubits. Here we introduce a programmable photonic integrated circuit (PIC), realized in a piezo-actuated silicon nitride (SiN)-in-oxide CMOS-compatible process, that implements anN×NMach–Zehnder mesh (MZM) capable of high-speed execution of linear optical transformations. The visible-spectrum photonic integrated mesh is programmed to generate optical connectivity on up toN = 8 inputs for a range of optically-heralded entanglement protocols. In particular, we experimentally demonstrated optical connections between 16 independent pairwise mode couplings through the MZM, with optical transformation fidelities averaging 0.991 ± 0.0063. The PIC’s reconfigurable optical connectivity suffices for the production of 8-qubit resource states as building blocks of larger topological cluster states for quantum computing. Our programmable PIC platform enables the fast and scalable optical switching technology necessary for network-based quantum information processors.

    

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3. Geometric deep optical sensing

   https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ade1220  

   Yuan, Shaofan ; Ma, Chao ; Fetaya, Ethan ; Mueller, Thomas ; Naveh, Doron ; Zhang, Fan ; Xia, Fengnian ( March 2023 , Science)

   BACKGROUND Optical sensing devices measure the rich physical properties of an incident light beam, such as its power, polarization state, spectrum, and intensity distribution. Most conventional sensors, such as power meters, polarimeters, spectrometers, and cameras, are monofunctional and bulky. For example, classical Fourier-transform infrared spectrometers and polarimeters, which characterize the optical spectrum in the infrared and the polarization state of light, respectively, can occupy a considerable portion of an optical table. Over the past decade, the development of integrated sensing solutions by using miniaturized devices together with advanced machine-learning algorithms has accelerated rapidly, and optical sensing research has evolved into a highly interdisciplinary field that encompasses devices and materials engineering, condensed matter physics, and machine learning. To this end, future optical sensing technologies will benefit from innovations in device architecture, discoveries of new quantum materials, demonstrations of previously uncharacterized optical and optoelectronic phenomena, and rapid advances in the development of tailored machine-learning algorithms. ADVANCES Recently, a number of sensing and imaging demonstrations have emerged that differ substantially from conventional sensing schemes in the way that optical information is detected. A typical example is computational spectroscopy. In this new paradigm, a compact spectrometer first collectively captures the comprehensive spectral information of an incident light beam using multiple elements or a single element under different operational states and generates a high-dimensional photoresponse vector. An advanced algorithm then interprets the vector to achieve reconstruction of the spectrum. This scheme shifts the physical complexity of conventional grating- or interference-based spectrometers to computation. Moreover, many of the recent developments go well beyond optical spectroscopy, and we discuss them within a common framework, dubbed “geometric deep optical sensing.” The term “geometric” is intended to emphasize that in this sensing scheme, the physical properties of an unknown light beam and the corresponding photoresponses can be regarded as points in two respective high-dimensional vector spaces and that the sensing process can be considered to be a mapping from one vector space to the other. The mapping can be linear, nonlinear, or highly entangled; for the latter two cases, deep artificial neural networks represent a natural choice for the encoding and/or decoding processes, from which the term “deep” is derived. In addition to this classical geometric view, the quantum geometry of Bloch electrons in Hilbert space, such as Berry curvature and quantum metrics, is essential for the determination of the polarization-dependent photoresponses in some optical sensors. In this Review, we first present a general perspective of this sensing scheme from the viewpoint of information theory, in which the photoresponse measurement and the extraction of light properties are deemed as information-encoding and -decoding processes, respectively. We then discuss demonstrations in which a reconfigurable sensor (or an array thereof), enabled by device reconfigurability and the implementation of neural networks, can detect the power, polarization state, wavelength, and spatial features of an incident light beam. OUTLOOK As increasingly more computing resources become available, optical sensing is becoming more computational, with device reconfigurability playing a key role. On the one hand, advanced algorithms, including deep neural networks, will enable effective decoding of high-dimensional photoresponse vectors, which reduces the physical complexity of sensors. Therefore, it will be important to integrate memory cells near or within sensors to enable efficient processing and interpretation of a large amount of photoresponse data. On the other hand, analog computation based on neural networks can be performed with an array of reconfigurable devices, which enables direct multiplexing of sensing and computing functions. We anticipate that these two directions will become the engineering frontier of future deep sensing research. On the scientific frontier, exploring quantum geometric and topological properties of new quantum materials in both linear and nonlinear light-matter interactions will enrich the information-encoding pathways for deep optical sensing. In addition, deep sensing schemes will continue to benefit from the latest developments in machine learning. Future highly compact, multifunctional, reconfigurable, and intelligent sensors and imagers will find applications in medical imaging, environmental monitoring, infrared astronomy, and many other areas of our daily lives, especially in the mobile domain and the internet of things. Schematic of deep optical sensing. The n -dimensional unknown information ( w ) is encoded into an m -dimensional photoresponse vector ( x ) by a reconfigurable sensor (or an array thereof), from which w′ is reconstructed by a trained neural network ( n ′ = n and w′   ≈   w ). Alternatively, x may be directly deciphered to capture certain properties of w . Here, w , x , and w′ can be regarded as points in their respective high-dimensional vector spaces ℛ n , ℛ m , and ℛ n ′ . 

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4. Enhancing the flexibility and functionality of SCNs: demonstration of evolution toward any-core-access, nondirectional, and contentionless spatial channel cross-connects [Invited]

   https://doi.org/10.1364/JOCN.423997  

   Jinno, Masahiko ; Ishikawa, Tsubasa ; Kodama, Takahiro ; Hasegawa, Hiroshi ; Subramaniam, Suresh ( July 2021 , Journal of Optical Communications and Networking)

   A spatial channel network (SCN) was recently proposed toward the forthcoming spatial division multiplexing (SDM) era, in which the optical layer is explicitly evolved to the hierarchical SDM and wavelength division multiplexing layers, and an optical node is decoupled into a spatial cross-connect (SXC) and wavelength cross-connect to achieve an ultrahigh-capacity optical network in a highly economical manner. In this paper, we report feasibility demonstrations of an evolution scenario regarding the SCN architecture to enhance the flexibility and functionality of spatial channel networking from a simplefixed-core-accessanddirectionalspatial channel ring network to a multidegree,any-core-access,nondirectional, andcore-contentionlessmesh SCN. As key building blocks of SXCs, we introduce what we believe to be novel optical devices: a$1\times <\#comment/>2$multicore fiber (MCF) splitter, a core selector (CS), and a core and port selector (CPS). We construct free-space optics-based prototypes of these devices using five-core MCFs. Detailed performance evaluations of the prototypes in terms of the insertion loss (IL), polarization-dependent loss (PDL), and intercore cross talk (XT) are conducted. The results show that the prototypes provide satisfactorily low levels of IL, PDL, and XT. We construct a wide variety of reconfigurable spatial add/drop multiplexers (RSADMs) and SXCs in terms of node degree, interport cross-connection architecture, and add/drop port connectivity flexibilities. Such RSADMs/SXCs include a fixed-core-access and directional RSADM using a$1\times <\#comment/>2$MCF splitter; an any-core-access, nondirectional SXC with core-contention using a CS; and an any-core-access, nondirectional SXC without core-contention using a CPS. Bit error rate performance measurements for SDM signals that traverse the RSADMs/SXCs confirm that there is no or a very slight optical signal-to-noise-ratio penalty from back-to-back performance. We also experimentally show that the flexibilities in the add/drop port of the SXCs allow us to recover from a single or concurrent double link failure with a wide variety of options in terms of availability and cost-effectiveness.

    

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5. Nanoscale nonreciprocity via photon-spin-polarized stimulated Raman scattering

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11175-z  

   Lawrence, Mark ; Dionne, Jennifer A. ( July 2019 , Nature Communications)

   Time reversal symmetry stands as a fundamental restriction on the vast majority of optical systems and devices. The reciprocal nature of Maxwell’s equations in linear, time-invariant media adds complexity and scale to photonic diodes, isolators, circulators and also sets fundamental efficiency limits on optical energy conversion. Though many theoretical proposals and low frequency demonstrations of nonreciprocity exist, Faraday rotation remains the only known nonreciprocal mechanism that persists down to the atomic scale. Here, we present photon-spin-polarized stimulated Raman scattering as a new nonreciprocal optical phenomenon which has, in principle, no lower size limit. Exploiting this process, we numerically demonstrate nanoscale nonreciprocal transmission of free-space beams at near-infrared frequencies with a 250 nm thick silicon metasurface as well as a fully-subwavelength plasmonic gap nanoantenna. In revealing all-optical spin-splitting, our results provide a foundation for compact nonreciprocal communication and computing technologies, from nanoscale optical isolators and full-duplex nanoantennas to topologically-protected networks.

    

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