There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

Orbital angular momentum (OAM), which describes the “phase twist” (helical phase pattern) of light beams, has recently gained interest due to its potential applications in many diverse areas. Particularly promising is the use of OAM for optical communications since: (i) coaxially propagating OAM beams with different azimuthal OAM states are mutually orthogonal, (ii) inter-beam crosstalk can be minimized, and (iii) the beams can be efficiently multiplexed and demultiplexed. As a result, multiple OAM states could be used as different carriers for multiplexing and transmitting multiple data streams, thereby potentially increasing the system capacity. In this paper, we review recent progress in OAM beam generation/detection, multiplexing/demultiplexing, and its potential applications in different scenarios including free-space optical communications, fiber-optic communications, and RF communications. Technical challenges and perspectives of OAM beams are also discussed.

Optical communications using orbital angular momentum beams

It is shown that the ordinary semiclassical theory of the absorption of light by exciton states is not completely satisfactory (in contrast to the case of absorption due to interband transitions). A more complete theory is developed. It is shown that excitons are approximate bosons, and, in interaction with the electromagnetic field, the exciton field plays the role of the classical polarization field. The eigenstates of the system of crystal and radiation field are mixtures of photons and excitons. The ordinary one-quantum optical lifetime of an excitation is infinite. Absorption occurs only when "three-body" processes are introduced. The theory includes "local field" effects, leading to the Lorentz local field correction when it is applicable. A Smakula equation for the oscillator strength in terms of the integrated absorption constant is derived.

a Quantum-Mechanical Theory of the Contribution of Excitons to the Complex Dielectric Constant of Crystals.

Optical Waveguide Theory

Driven by the increasing demand on handing microwave signals with compact device, low power consumption, high efficiency and high reliability, it is highly desired to generate, distribute, and process microwave signals using photonic integrated circuits. Silicon photonics offers a promising platform facilitating ultracompact microwave photonic signal processing assisted by silicon nanophotonic devices. In this paper, we propose, theoretically analyze and experimentally demonstrate a simple scheme to realize ultracompact rejection ratio tunable notch microwave photonic filter (MPF) based on a silicon photonic crystal (PhC) nanocavity with fixed extinction ratio. Using a conventional modulation scheme with only a single phase modulator (PM), the rejection ratio of the presented MPF can be tuned from about 10 dB to beyond 60 dB. Moreover, the central frequency tunable operation in the high rejection ratio region is also demonstrated in the experiment.

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Photonic crystal nanocavity assisted rejection ratio tunable notch microwave photonic filter

430074, China Abstract Integrated optical filter based on microring resonators plays a critical role in many applications, ranging from wavelength division multiplexing and switching to channel routing. Bandwidth tunable filters are capable of meeting the on-demand flexible operations in complex situations, due to their advantages of scalability, multi-function, and energy-saving. It has been investigated recently that parity-time (PT) symmetry coupled-resonant systems can be applied to the bandwidth-tunable filters. However, due to the trade-off between the bandwidth-tunable contrast ratio and insertion loss of system, the bandwidth-tunable contrast ratio of this method is severely limited. Here, the bandwidth-tunable contrast ratio is defined as the maximum bandwidth divided by the minimum bandwidth. In this work, we show that high bandwidth-tunable contrast ratio and low insertion loss of system can be achieved simultaneously by increasing the coupling strength between the input port and the resonant. System characterizations under different coupling states reveal that the low insertion loss can be obtained when the system initially operates at the over-coupling condition. A high bandwidth-tunable contrast ratio PT-symmetry band-pass filter with moderate insertion loss is shown on the Silicon platform. Our scheme provides an effective method to reduce the insertion loss of on-chip tunable filters, which is also applicable to the high-order cascaded

Design optimization of band-pass filter based on parity-time symmetry coupled-resonant

A magnetic-field sensing scheme based on a silica microcapillary resonator filled with magnetic fluid is proposed and experimentally demonstrated The results show that a sensitivity of 46 pm/mT is achieved

Magnetic-field sensor based on magnetic-fluid-filled silica microcapillary resonator

All-optical control of silicon photonic devices plays a key role in on-chip all-optical computing, switching and signal processing. However, due to the weak intrinsic nonlinear effects of silicon, current integrated devices are limited by high power consumptions. Here, an all-optical controllable optomechanical microring resonator (OMMR) is proposed and fabricated on the silicon platform. Due to the mechanical Kerr effect induced by the optical gradient force (OGF), we realize seamless wavelength tuning over a range of 2.56 nm which is 61% of the free-spectral range, with a high tuning efficiency of 80 GHz/mW. By controlling the pump power, the OMMR indicates three working regions, which are the cutoff region, amplified region and saturate region. Accordingly, this function is similar to a transistor. Furthermore, the dynamic properties of the OMMR are investigated. By analyzing the dynamic responses, we demonstrate that the OMMR is driven by the OGF, rather than other nonlinear effects. The method simplifies the experimental setup, compared with measuring the intrinsic mechanical frequency of the OMMR. This all-silicon device is energy-efficient and compatible with complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) processing. We believe that this work is important for on-chip all-optial signal processing and beneficial to futher studies on integrated optomechanics.

https://doi.org/10.1109/jphot.2022.3200983

Energy-Efficient All-Optical Control of Silicon Microring Resonators via the Optical Gradient Force

We investigated the cross mode modulation (XMM) effect of a strong pump light on a weak probe light. The eigenmodes and the corresponding eigenvalues of the nonlinear system can be obtained by using the Hamiltonian approach, i.e., a theoretical framework using a linear coupled mode theory. The evolution of the probe light can be obtained based on eigenmodes and eigenvectors, which agrees with the numerical simulations of the coupled nonlinear Schrodinger equations.

Hamiltonian formulation of cross mode modulation

A parity-time symmetric optoelectronic oscillator is constructed based on stimulated Brillouin scattering. A stable microwave signal at 9.66 GHz is generated with a phase noise of −103.9 dBc/Hz at an offset frequency of 10 kHz.

Xinliang Zhang

Papers

Design optimization of band-pass filter based on parity-time symmetry coupled-resonant

Magnetic-field sensor based on magnetic-fluid-filled silica microcapillary resonator

Energy-Efficient All-Optical Control of Silicon Microring Resonators via the Optical Gradient Force

Hamiltonian formulation of cross mode modulation

Optoelectronic oscillator based on SBS-assisted parity-time symmetry