The term photonic crystals appears because of the analogy between electron waves in crystals and the light waves in artificial periodic dielectric structures. During the recent years the investigation of one-, two-and three-dimensional periodic structures has attracted a widespread attention of the world optics community because of great potentiality of such structures in advanced applied optical fields. The interest in periodic structures has been stimulated by the fast development of semiconductor technology that now allows the fabrication of artificial structures, whose period is comparable with the wavelength of light in the visible and infrared ranges.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/6354/16969/00781867.pdf

Photonic crystals

Structured light refers to the generation and application of custom light fields. As the tools and technology to create and detect structured light have evolved, steadily the applications have begun to emerge. This roadmap touches on the key fields within structured light from the perspective of experts in those areas, providing insight into the current state and the challenges their respective fields face. Collectively the roadmap outlines the venerable nature of structured light research and the exciting prospects for the future that are yet to be realized.

/pdf/roadmap-on-structured-light-3r840pnxka.pdf

Roadmap on structured light

Foundations For Microwave Engineering

Three figures of merit are proposed as quality measures for surface plasmon waveguides. They are defined as benefit-to-cost ratios where the benefit is confinement and the cost is attenuation. Three different ways of measuring confinement are considered, leading to three figures of merit. One of the figures of merit is connected to the quality factor. The figures of merit were then used to assess and compare the wavelength response of hree popular 1-D surface plasmon waveguides: the single metal-dielectric interface, the metal slab bounded by dielectric and the dielectric slab bounded by metal. Closed form expressions are given for the figures of merit of the single metal-dielectric interface.

Figures of merit for surface plasmon waveguides.

The notorious implication of integrated optics in the nowadays communication systems makes more interesting the development of optical integrated devices and circuits. The evolution of the communication systems was sustained by the integrated optics and it is obvious that the actual interests in the optical communications are also transferred and adapted to integrated optics. The presentation of actual state-of-the-art in this field is a good opportunity both for an evaluation on the above mentioned evolution and for discerning the actual trends and their perspectives. These trends, guided by applicative goals, have to be discussed not only from the theoretical point of view but also from a practical one.

Optical integrated circuits

The orbital momentum of optical or radio waves can be used as a degree of freedom to transmit information. However, mainly for technical reasons, this degree of freedom has not been widely used in ...

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/17/4/043040/pdf

Orbital angular momentum modes do not increase the channel capacity in communication links

Abshact-A field noise spectral density matrix for the noise from a linear optical device, modeled as an optical multiport, is derived semi-classically. The noise is formulated in the scattering parameters, population inversion factor, and internal efficiency of the device. From this noise expression, a new equation for the amplified spontaneous emission spectral density from an optical amplifier is derived. This equation is more general than those previously published. The derivations are accomplished with the aid of methods from ordinary (classical) electrical network theory and only one quantum mechanical result regarding the noise from a conductance. As a result, the first-mentioned noise expression also includes the so-called vacuum field fluctuations. Further, the current noise spectrum of a square-law detector is derived with classical methods. The optical input to the detector includes the vacuum field fluctuations, which are shown to be the cause of the detector shot noise. Here, a second quantum mechanical result has to be employed, viz., that the vacuum field fluctuations cannot be detected alone. The results in this paper agree with the special cases found in the literature. The noise expressions are well suited for examination of the optical noise performance of arbitrary linear optical networks including, e.g., amplifiers, attenuators, isolators, reflections, filters, and couplers.

Quantum Noise Treated with Classical Electrical Network Theory

To investigate the potential for dense integration of photonic components, we analyse passive plasmonic/metallic waveguides and waveguide components at optical frequencies by using mostly microwave engineering approaches. Four figures of performance are formulated that are utilised to compare the characteristics of four different slab waveguides with zero frequency cut-off modes. Three of these are metallic based whereas the fourth one, which also serves as a reference, is dielectric based with high index-contrast. It is found that all figures of performance cannot be optimised independently; in particular there is a trade-off between the waveguide Q-value and the transversal field confinement. Microwave methods are used to design several photonic transmission line components. The small Q-value of the metallic waveguides is the main disadvantage when using materials and telecom frequencies of today. Hence plasmonic waveguides do not offer full functionality for some important integrated components, being severe for frequency-selective applications. To achieve a dense integration, it is concluded that new materials are needed that offer Q-values several orders of magnitude higher than metals.

Plasmonic/metallic passive waveguides and waveguide components for photonic dense integrated circuits: a feasibility study based on microwave engineering

In a seminal paper, Humblet decomposed the angular momentum of a classical electromagnetic field as a sum of three terms: the orbital angular momentum (OAM), the spin, and the more unfamiliar surface angular momentum. In this paper, we present the result of such decomposition for various metallic waveguides. We investigate two hollow metal waveguides with circular and rectangular cross sections, respectively. The waveguides are excited with two TE eigenmodes driven in phase quadrature. As references, two better known modes are also analyzed: a plane, a circularly polarized wave (a TEM mode), and a TE-Bessel beam, both of infinite transverse extent and with no metallic boundaries. Our analysis shows that modes carrying OAM and spin can also propagate in the metallic waveguides, even when the cross section of the waveguide is distinctly non-circular. However, the mode density of orthogonal modes carrying OAM is at most equal to that of the waveguides' eigenmodes.

Eilert Berglind

Papers

Orbital angular momentum modes do not increase the channel capacity in communication links

Quantum Noise Treated with Classical Electrical Network Theory

Plasmonic/metallic passive waveguides and waveguide components for photonic dense integrated circuits: a feasibility study based on microwave engineering

Humblet's Decomposition of the Electromagnetic Angular Moment in Metallic Waveguides

A SIMPLE METhOD FOR NOISE ANALYSIS OF A CHAIN OF LINEARISED OPTICAL TWO-PORTS