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Integrated optical vortex microcomb

Nature Photonics (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

The exploration of physical degrees of freedom of light with infinite dimensionality, such as orbital angular momentum (OAM) and frequency, has profoundly reshaped the landscape of modern optics, with representative photonic functional devices including optical vortex emitters and frequency combs. In nanophotonics, whispering gallery mode microresonators naturally support applications based on the OAM of light and have been employed as on-chip emitters of monochromatic optical vortices. On the other hand, whispering gallery mode microresonators can serve as a highly efficient non-linear optical platform for producing light at different frequencies, that is, microcombs. Here we combine optical vortices and microcombs by demonstrating an optical vortex comb on a III–V integrated non-linear ring microresonator. The angular grating-dressed non-linear microring simultaneously emits spatiotemporal light springs consisting of 50 OAM modes, with each frequency of the microcomb carrying a distinct OAM value. We also experimentally generate optical pulses with time-varying OAM by carefully endowing the spatiotemporal light springs with a specific intermodal phase relation. We expect our work to favour the development of integrated non-linear and quantum photonics for exploring fundamental optical physics and advancing photonic quantum technology.

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Fig. 1: A schematic showing the generation of self-torque pulses from the vortex microcomb.
Fig. 2: Characterizations of the AlGaAsOI microring.
Fig. 3: Characterizations of the vortex frequency microcomb.
Fig. 4: Synthesis of self-torque pulses using vortex microcombs in soliton states.

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Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available via figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24771078 (ref. 39). All other data used in this study are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2021YFA1400800), VILLUM FONDEN (VIL50469), European Research Council (REFOCUS 853522), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (62035017, 12361141824, 12334017, 12293052, 12104522, 92050202, 61975243 and 12104309), the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong (2022A1515011400), Guangdong Introducing Innovative and Entrepreneurial Teams of ‘The Pearl River Talent Recruitment Program’ (2021ZT09X044), the Danish National Research Foundation, SPOC (DNRF123), NanoPhoton (DNRF147), European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement (861097), the Guangdong Special Support Program (2019JC05X397), the Shanghai Science and Technology Committee (19060502500) and the Shanghai Sailing Program (21YF1431500). We thank Y. Chen, J. Liu and S. Yu for loaning equipment.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Bo Chen, Yueguang Zhou, Yang Liu, Chaochao Ye, Qian Cao.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, School of Physics, School of Electronics and Information Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China

    Bo Chen, Peinian Huang, Jiaqi Li, Yanfeng Zhang, Xuehua Wang & Jin Liu

  2. DTU Electro, Department of Electrical and Photonics Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark

    Yueguang Zhou, Yang Liu, Chaochao Ye, Chanju Kim, Yi Zheng, Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe, Kresten Yvind & Minhao Pu

  3. Center for Silicon Photonics for Optical Communications (SPOC), Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark

    Yang Liu, Chanju Kim, Yi Zheng, Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe, Kresten Yvind & Minhao Pu

  4. School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, China

    Qian Cao & Qiwen Zhan

  5. Zhangjiang Laboratory, Shanghai, China

    Qian Cao & Qiwen Zhan

  6. NanoPhoton – Center for Nanophotonics, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark

    Kresten Yvind & Minhao Pu

  7. CAS Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

    Jin Li & Chunhua Dong

  8. Institute of Advanced Photonics Technology, School of Information Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China

    Songnian Fu

  9. Department of Optical Science and Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China

    Qiwen Zhan

  10. Quantum Science Center of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Shenzhen, China

    Xuehua Wang & Jin Liu

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  1. Bo Chen
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Contributions

J. Liu conceived the project. B.C., Y. Zhou and Q.C. performed the numerical simulations. Y. Zhou, C.Y. and Y.L. fabricated the devices. B.C., P.H., Jin Li, Y.L., C.Y., Jiaqi Li, Y. Zhang and Y. Zhou built the setup and characterized the devices. B.C., P.H., Y.L., C.Y., Y. Zhou, C.K., Y. Zheng, Q.C., Q.Z., M.P. and J. Liu analysed the data. M.P. and J. Liu wrote the paper with inputs from all authors. C.D., L.K.O., K.Y., Q.Z., X.W., M.P. and J. Liu supervised the project.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Qiwen Zhan, Xuehua Wang, Minhao Pu or Jin Liu.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Noise characterizations for microcomb states.

(a, b) show the representative microcomb spectra in a noisy state (a) and a soliton state (b). (c, d) show the corresponding RF spectra for different comb states (red). The blue traces show the reference traces recorded with no comb being generated. The increased power below 1 GHz (the red trace in (c)) suggests a noisy comb state.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Mode decomposition of the vortex microcomb.

(a) Schematic of the experimental setup for the OAM mode purity measurement. OL: the objective lens, BFP: the back focal plane, HWP: half-wave plate, P: polarizer, SLM: spatial light modulator, M: mirror, L1 - L2: lenses, CCD: charge-coupled device. (b, e) Measured on-axis intensity distributions for the linearly polarized component of the emitted superposition mode with l = 4 and l = -4. (c, f) Phase distributions applied to the SLM. (d, g) Measured far-field patterns for the linearly polarized component of the superposition mode. (h) OAM spectrum for frequency OAM modes from l = -5 to l = 9.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Simulation of the self-torque pules with the different CW/CCW compositions.

(a-e) Simulations for the single-helices self-torque pulses. (f-j) Simulations for the double-helices pulses. (c) and (h) are the results presented in Fig. 4 which employes the values extracted from the mode decomposition measurement in 2.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–10 and Discussion.

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Chen, B., Zhou, Y., Liu, Y. et al. Integrated optical vortex microcomb. Nat. Photon. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-024-01415-0

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