No Arabic abstract
Retrieving the vast amount of information carried by a photon is an enduring challenge in quantum metrology science and quantum photonics research. The transverse spatial state of a photon is a convenient high-dimensional quantum system for study, as it has a well-understood classical analogue as the transverse complex field profile of an optical beam. One severe drawback of all currently available quantum metrology techniques is the need for a time-consuming characterization process, which scales very unfavorably with the dimensionality of the quantum system. Here we demonstrate a technique that directly measures a million-dimensional photonic spatial state in a single setting. Through the arrangement of a weak measurement of momentum and parallel strong measurements of position, the complex values of the entire photon state vector become measurable directly. The dimension of our measured state is approximately four orders of magnitude larger than previously measured. Our work opens up a practical route for characterizing high-dimensional quantum systems in real time. Furthermore, our demonstration also serve as a high-speed, extremely-high-resolution unambiguous complex field measurement technique for diverse classical applications.
We report experimental measurement of critical disorder in weakly disordered, one-dimensional photonic crystals. We measure the configurationally-averaged transmission at various degrees of weak disorder. We extract the density of states (DoS) after fitting the transmission with theoretical profiles, and identify the Lifshitz tail realized by weak disorder. We observe the vanishing of Van Hove singularities and the flattening of the DoS with increasing disorder in our system. Systematic variation of disorder strength allows us to study the behavior of Lifshitz exponent with the degree of disorder. This provides a direct handle to the critical disorder in the one-dimensional crystal, at which the transport behavior of the system is known to change. The contradictory behavior at very weak disorder in the DoS variation at the bandedge and the midgap are seen to resolve into synchronous behavior beyond the critical disorder. The experimentally measured transmission is shown to carry a clear signature of the critical disorder, which is in very good agreement with the theoretically expected disorder.
We report results of a systematic analysis of spatial solitons in the model of 1D photonic crystals, built as a periodic lattice of waveguiding channels, of width D, separated by empty channels of width L-D. The system is characterized by its structural duty cycle, DC = D/L. In the case of the self-defocusing (SDF) intrinsic nonlinearity in the channels, one can predict new effects caused by competition between the linear trapping potential and the effective nonlinear repulsive one. Several species of solitons are found in the first two finite bandgaps of the SDF model, as well as a family of fundamental solitons in the semi-infinite gap of the system with the self-focusing nonlinearity. At moderate values of DC (such as 0.50), both fundamental and higher-order solitons populating the second bandgap of the SDF model suffer destabilization with the increase of the total power. Passing the destabilization point, the solitons assume a flat-top shape, while the shape of unstable solitons gets inverted, with local maxima appearing in empty layers. In the model with narrow channels (around DC =0.25), fundamental and higher-order solitons exist only in the first finite bandgap, where they are stable, despite the fact that they also feature the inverted shape.
Light transport in a dilute photonic crystal is considered. The analytical expression for the transmission coefficient is derived.Straightening of light under certain conditions in a one-dimensional photonic crystal is predicted. Such behavior is caused by the formation of a localized state in transversal motion. The main contribution to the central diffracted wave transmission coefficient is due to states, that either close to the conductance bands bottom or deeply localized in the forbidden gap. Both these states suppress mobility in the transverse direction and force light to be straightened. Straightening of light in the optical region along with small reflection make these systems very promising for use in solar cells.
An ultra-compact one-dimensional topological photonic crystal (1D-TPC) is designed in a single mode silicon bus-waveguide to generate Fano resonance lineshape. The Fano resonance comes from the interference between the discrete topological boundary state of the 1D-TPC and the continuum high-order leaky mode of the bus-waveguide. Standalone asymmetric Fano resonance lineshapes are obtained experimentally in the waveguide transmission spectrum with a maximum extinction ratio of 33 dB and a slope ratio of 10 dB/nm over a broadband flat background.
Three-dimensional (3D) artificial metacrystals host rich topological phases, such as Weyl points, nodal rings and 3D photonic topological insulators. These topological states enable a wide range of applications, including 3D robust waveguide, one-way fiber and negative refraction of surface wave. However, these carefully designed metacrystals are usually very complex, hindering their extension to nanoscale photonic systems. Here, we theoretically proposed and experimentally realized an ideal nodal ring in visible region using a simple 1D photonic crystal. The pi Berry phase around the ring is manifested by a 2pi reflection phases winding and the resultant drumhead surface states. By breaking the inversion symmetry, the nodal ring can be gapped and the pi-Berry phase would diffuse into a toroidal shaped Berry flux, resulting in photonic ridge states (the 3D extension of quantum valley Hall states). Our results provide a simple and feasible platform for exploring 3D topological physics and their potential applications in nanophotonics.