Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Photonic quantum Hall effect and multiplexed light sources of large orbital angular momenta

Abstract

The quantum Hall effect involves electrons confined to a two-dimensional plane subject to a perpendicular magnetic field, but it also has a photonic analogue1,2,3,4,5,6. Using heterostructures based on structured semiconductors on a magnetic substrate, we introduce compact and integrated coherent light sources of large orbital angular momenta7 based on the photonic quantum Hall effect1,2,3,4,5,6. The photonic quantum Hall effect enables the direct and integrated generation of coherent orbital angular momenta beams of large quantum numbers from light travelling in leaky circular orbits at the interface between two topologically dissimilar photonic structures. Our work gives direct access to the infinite number of orbital angular momenta basis elements and will thus enable multiplexed quantum light sources for communication and imaging applications.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Photonic QH rings and integrated OAM of large quantum numbers.
Fig. 2: Simulation, fabrication and luminescence of photonic QH rings.
Fig. 3: Lasing characteristics and photon statistics of photonic QH rings.
Fig. 4: Far-field interference pattern of beams emitted from photonic QH ring lasers.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The computer codes that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

References

  1. Raghu, S. & Haldane, F. D. M. Analogs of quantum-Hall-effect edge states in photonic crystals. Phys. Rev. A 78, 033834 (2008).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. Wang, Z., Chong, Y., Joannopoulos, J. D. & Soljačić, M. Observation of unidirectional backscattering-immune topological electromagnetic states. Nature 461, 772–775 (2009).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  3. Bahari, B. et al. Nonreciprocal lasing in topological cavities of arbitrary geometries. Science 358, 636–640 (2017).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Klembt, S. et al. Exciton-polariton topological insulator. Nature 562, 552–556 (2018).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Khandekar, C. & Jacob, Z. Thermal spin photonics in the near-field of nonreciprocal media. New J. Phys. 21, 103030 (2019).

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  6. Seclì, M., Capone, M. & Carusotto, I. Theory of chiral edge state lasing in a two-dimensional topological system. Phys. Rev. Res. 1, 033148 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Allen, L., Beijersbergen, M. W., Spreeuw, R. J. C. & Woerdman, J. P. Orbital angular momentum of light and the transformation of Laguerre-Gaussian laser modes. Phys. Rev. A 45, 8185 (1992).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  8. Hall, E. H. On a new action of the magnet on electric currents. Am. J. Math. 2, 287–292 (1879).

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  9. von Klitzing, K., Dorda, G. & Pepper, M. New method for high-accuracy determination of the fine-structure constant based on quantized Hall resistance. Phys. Rev. Lett. 45, 494–497 (1980).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  10. Prange, R. E. & Girvin, S. M. The Quantum Hall Effect (Springer, 1987).

  11. Hafezi, M., Demler, E. A., Lukin, M. D. & Taylor, J. M. Robust optical delay lines with topological protection. Nat. Phys. 7, 907–912 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Longhi, S. Synthetic gauge fields for light beams in optical resonators. Opt. Lett. 40, 2941–2944 (2015).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  13. Kruk, S. et al. Nonlinear light generation in topological nanostructures. Nat. Nanotechnol. 14, 126–130 (2019).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  14. Bandres, M. A. et al. Topological insulator laser: experiments. Science 359, 6381 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Rechtsman, M. C. et al. Photonic Floquet topological insulators. Nature 496, 196–200 (2013).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  16. Fleury, R., Khanikaev, A. B. & Alù, A. Floquet topological insulators for sound. Nat. Commun. 7, 11744 (2016).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  17. Khanikaev, A. B. et al. Photonic topological insulators. Nat. Mater. 12, 233–239 (2013).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  18. Ma, T. & Shvets, G. All-Si valley-Hall photonic topological insulator. New J. Phys. 18, 025012 (2016).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  19. Shao, Z.-K. et al. A high-performance topological bulk laser based on band-inversion-induced reflection. Nat. Nanotechnol. 15, 67–72 (2019).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  20. Padgett, M. J. Orbital angular momentum 25 years on [invited]. Opt. Exp. 25, 11265–11274 (2017).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  21. Miao, P. et al. Orbital angular momentum microlaser. Science 353, 464–467 (2016).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  22. Carlon Zambon, N. et al. Optically controlling the emission chirality of microlasers. Nat. Photon. 13, 283–288 (2019).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  23. Sroor, H. et al. High-purity orbital angular momentum states from a visible metasurface laser. Nat. Photon. 14, 498–503 (2020).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  24. Yang, Z.-Q., Shao, Z.-K., Chen, H.-Z., Mao, X.-R. & Ma, R.-M. Spin-momentum-locked edge mode for topological vortex lasing. Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 013903 (2020).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  25. Sarollahi, M. et al. Calculation of reflectivity spectra for semi-infinite two-dimensional photonic crystals. J. Nanophoton. 10, 046012 (2016).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  26. Park, H. et al. Electrically driven single-cell photonic crystal laser. Science 305, 1444–1447 (2004).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  27. Loudon, R. The Quantum Theory of Light 3rd edn (Oxford Univ. Press, 2000).

  28. Huang, C. et al. Ultrafast control of vortex microlasers. Science 367, 1018–1021 (2020).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  29. Zhang, Z. et al. Tunable topological charge vortex microlaser. Science 368, 760–763 (2020).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was mostly supported by the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (N00014-17-1-2671), the ONR JTO MRI Award (N00014-17-1-2442), the National Science Foundation Career Award (ECCS-1554021) and the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory under US Department of Energy contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231. The work was partially supported by the Moore Inventor Fellows program, the DARPA DSO-NLM Program HR00111820038 and the NSF QLCI programme through grant number OMA-2016245. The work was performed in part at the San Diego Nanotechnology Infrastructure, a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure, which is supported by the National Science Foundation (ECCS-1542148). We thank M. Montero for technical assistance regarding fabrication.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

B.K. conceived the project and guided the theoretical and experimental investigations. B.B. fabricated the samples. B.B. and L.H. performed the simulations. B.B., S.H.P., D.P., A.N. and A.E.A. performed the measurements. B.K. and Y.F. supervised the research. All the authors contributed to discussions and manuscript writing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Boubacar Kanté.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature Physics thanks Ren-Min Ma, Lorenzo Marrucci and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–12 and discussion.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bahari, B., Hsu, L., Pan, S.H. et al. Photonic quantum Hall effect and multiplexed light sources of large orbital angular momenta. Nat. Phys. 17, 700–703 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01165-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01165-8

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing