Integrated microwave photonic notch filter using a heterogeneously integrated Brillouin and active-silicon photonic circuit.

Microwave photonics (MWP) has unlocked a new paradigm for Radio Frequency (RF) signal processing by harnessing the inherent broadband and tunable nature of photonic components. Despite numerous efforts made to implement integrated MWP filters, a key RF processing functionality, it remains a long-standing challenge to achieve a fully integrated photonic circuit that can merge the megahertz-level spectral resolution required for RF applications with key electro-optic components. Here, we overcome this challenge by introducing a compact 5 mm × 5 mm chip-scale MWP filter with active E-O components, demonstrating 37 MHz spectral resolution. We achieved this device by heterogeneously integrating chalcogenide waveguides, which provide Brillouin gain, in a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) foundry-manufactured silicon photonic chip containing integrated modulators and photodetectors. This work paves the way towards a new generation of compact, high-resolution RF photonic filters with wideband frequency tunability demanded by future applications, such as air and spaceborne RF communication payloads.

Erratum: Roadmap for phase change materials in photonics and beyond.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107946.].

Roadmap for phase change materials in photonics and beyond.

Phase Change Materials (PCMs) have demonstrated tremendous potential as a platform for achieving diverse functionalities in active and reconfigurable micro-nanophotonic devices across the electromagnetic spectrum, ranging from terahertz to visible frequencies. This comprehensive roadmap reviews the material and device aspects of PCMs, and their diverse applications in active and reconfigurable micro-nanophotonic devices across the electromagnetic spectrum. It discusses various device configurations and optimization techniques, including deep learning-based metasurface design. The integration of PCMs with Photonic Integrated Circuits and advanced electric-driven PCMs are explored. PCMs hold great promise for multifunctional device development, including applications in non-volatile memory, optical data storage, photonics, energy harvesting, biomedical technology, neuromorphic computing, thermal management, and flexible electronics.

Chip-based SBS for image rejection in a broadband microwave photonic mixer.

Microwave photonics offers a promising solution for frequency converting microwave signals, however, demonstrations so far have either been bulky fibre implementations or lacked rejection of interfering image signals. Here, we demonstrate the first microwave photonic mixer with image rejection of broadband signals utilising chip-based stimulated Brillouin scattering and interferometry. We demonstrate frequency down-conversion of carrier frequencies ranging from 10 GHz-16 GHz, ultra-high image rejection for a single tone of up to 70 dB, and 100 MHz and 400 MHz wide analogue signals with 28.5 dB and 16 dB image rejection, respectively. Furthermore, we down-convert 200 Mb/s quadrature-phase-shift keying signals with an error vector magnitude as low as -9.6 dB when simultaneously present interfering image signals are suppressed by the mixer.

Nanotechnology for a Sustainable Future: Addressing Global Challenges with the International Network4Sustainable Nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology has important roles to play in international efforts in sustainability. We discuss how current and future capabilities in nanotechnology align with and support the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. We argue that, as a field, we can accelerate the progress toward these goals both directly through technological solutions and through our special interdisciplinary skills in communication and tackling difficult challenges. We discuss the roles of targeting solutions, technology translation, the circular economy, and a number of examples from national efforts around the world in reaching these goals. We have formed a network of leading nanocenters to address these challenges globally and seek to recruit others to join us.

Effective linewidth reduction in self-homodyne coherent reception by stimulated Brillouin scattering-based optical carrier recovery.

In this paper, we demonstrate a self-homodyne coherent system with a significantly narrowed effective linewidth using optical carrier recovery based on stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), employing only coarse path length matching. The effective linewidth of the SBS-based receiver system is reduced from 75 kHz to less than 2 kHz, which is estimated by Lorentzian fitting of power spectra, and confirmed by simulation results of the tolerance window length for phase noise compensation (PNC) with different linewidth. Both experimental and numerical studies on the tracking requirements on PNC algorithms confirm effective linewidth reduction to this level, and show a 32x relaxation of the phase recovery tracking window length. This highlights the potential to significantly reduce the computational complexity of PNC even in coarsely optimized SBS-based self-homodyne coherent systems, providing an alternative to using demanding ultra-low linewidth lasers.

Wide-range optical carrier recovery via broadened Brillouin filters.

Stimulated Brillouin scattering has great potential for wide-wavelength-range optical carrier recovery, as it can act as a parametrically defined narrowband gain filter. However, due to the dispersion of the Brillouin frequency shift, prior demonstrations have been limited in wavelength range. Here, we demonstrate that frequency modulating the pump light for a gain filter based on stimulated Brillouin scattering enables optical carrier recovery for a broad range of input wavelengths. We demonstrate highly selective (<150M H z bandwidth) amplification for optical carriers over an 18 nm wide wavelength range in the optical communications C-band, an ∼6× improvement over using an unmodulated pump. Measurements of the noise properties of these spectrally broadened gain filters, in both amplitude and phase, indicate the noise performance and SNR are maintained over a wide wavelength range. Our technique provides a potential solution for highly selective, wavelength agnostic optical carrier recovery.

Integrated microwave photonic true-time delay with interferometric delay enhancement based on Brillouin scattering and microring resonators.

True-time delays are important building blocks in modern radio frequency systems that can be implemented using integrated microwave photonics, enabling higher carrier frequencies, improved bandwidths, and a reduction in size, weight, and power. Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) offers optically-induced continuously tunable delays and is thus ideal for applications that require programmable reconfiguration but previous approaches have been limited by large SBS gain requirements. Here, we overcome this limitation by using radio-frequency interferometry to enhance the Brillouin-induced delay applied to the optical sidebands that carry RF signals, while controlling the phase of the optical carrier with integrated silicon nitride microring resonators. We report a delay tunability over 600 ps exploiting an enhancement factor of 30, over a bandwidth of 1 GHz using less than 1 dB of Brillouin gain utilizing a photonic chip architecture based on Brillouin scattering and microring resonators.

High-conversion-gain and deep-image-rejection Brillouin chip-based photonic RF mixer.

In this Letter, we report a chip-based photonic radio-frequency (RF) mixer with a maximum conversion gain of -9dB and image rejection ratio of 50 dB for 3.2 GHz to 13.2 GHz RF frequency range. This is achieved by the combined use of optical carrier suppression modulation and on-chip stimulated Brillouin scattering. These results will stimulate future implementations of integrated photonic RF mixers in complicated electromagnetic environments.

Multidimensional synthetic chiral-tube lattices via nonlinear frequency conversion.

Geometrical dimensionality plays a fundamentally important role in the topological effects arising in discrete lattices. Although direct experiments are limited by three spatial dimensions, the research topic of synthetic dimensions implemented by the frequency degree of freedom in photonics is rapidly advancing. The manipulation of light in these artificial lattices is typically realized through electro-optic modulation; yet, their operating bandwidth imposes practical constraints on the range of interactions between different frequency components. Here we propose and experimentally realize all-optical synthetic dimensions involving specially tailored simultaneous short- and long-range interactions between discrete spectral lines mediated by frequency conversion in a nonlinear waveguide. We realize triangular chiral-tube lattices in three-dimensional space and explore their four-dimensional generalization. We implement a synthetic gauge field with nonzero magnetic flux and observe the associated multidimensional dynamics of frequency combs, all within one physical spatial port. We anticipate that our method will provide a new means for the fundamental study of high-dimensional physics and act as an important step towards using topological effects in optical devices operating in the time and frequency domains.

Low-RF-loss and large-rejection reconfigurable Brillouin-based RF photonic bandpass filter.

We present a high-performance radio frequency (RF) photonic bandpass filter enabled by combining on-chip Brillouin scattering with a suppressed carrier phase modulation scheme. We achieve a low RF loss of 5 dB and a large stopband rejection of more than 40 dB, which represents a significant improvement of 20 dB to the RF passband gain and 31 dB to the RF rejection ratio over traditional modulation schemes under the same optical power consumption. We further demonstrate filter reconfigurability including multiple passbands, wide frequency (1-20 GHz), and bandwidth tunability (30-350 MHz) without compromising the RF performance.

Si3N4-chip-based versatile photonic RF waveform generator with a wide tuning range of repetition rate.

In this Letter, we demonstrate a ${{\rm Si}_3}{{\rm N}_4}$Si3N4-chip-based photonic approach to generate versatile radio frequency (RF) waveforms with a large tuning range of repetition rates. The amplitude and phase of the RF-phase-modulated signal are spectrally manipulated to synthesize Fourier coefficients of the desired RF waveforms by controlling the resonance conditions and frequencies of ${{\rm Si}_3}{{\rm N}_4}$Si3N4 optical ring resonators. Full-duty-cycle triangular, square, and sawtooth waveforms with widely tunable repetition rates from 1 to 13 GHz were experimentally generated.

Positive link gain microwave photonic bandpass filter using Si3N4-ring-enabled sideband filtering and carrier suppression.

Microwave photonic bandpass filters (MPBPFs) are important building blocks in radio-frequency (RF) signal processing systems. However, most of the reported MPBPFs fail to satisfy the stringent real-world performance metrics, particularly low RF insertion loss. In this paper we report a novel MPBPF scheme using two cascaded integrated silicon nitride (Si3N4) ring resonators, achieving a high link gain in the RF filter passband. In this scheme, one ring operates at an optimal over-coupling condition to enable a strong RF passband whilst an auxiliary ring is used to increase the detected RF signal power via tuning the optical carrier-to-sideband ratio. The unique combination of these two techniques enables compact size as well as high RF performance. Compared to previously reported ring-based MPBPFs, this work achieves a record-high RF gain of 1.8 dB in the passband, with a high spectral resolution of 260 MHz. Furthermore, a multi-band MPBPF with optimized RF gain, tunable central frequencies, and frequency spacing tunability is realized using additional ring resonators, highlighting the scalability and flexibility of this chip-based MPBPF scheme.

Highly sensitive, broadband microwave frequency identification using a chip-based Brillouin optoelectronic oscillator.

Detection and frequency estimation of radio frequency (RF) signals are critical in modern RF systems, including wireless communication and radar. Photonic techniques have made huge progress in solving the problem imposed by the fundamental trade-off between detection range and accuracy. However, neither fiber-based nor integrated photonic RF signal detection and frequency estimation systems have achieved wide range and low error with high sensitivity simultaneously in a single system. In this paper, we demonstrate the first Brillouin opto-electronic oscillator (B-OEO) based on on-chip stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) to achieve RF signal detection. The broad tunability and narrowband amplification of on-chip SBS allow for the wide-range and high-accuracy detection. Feeding the unknown RF signal into the B-OEO cavity amplifies the signal which is matched with the oscillation mode to detect low-power RF signals. We are able to detect RF signals from 1.5 to 40 GHz with power levels as low as -67 dBm and a frequency accuracy of ± 3.4 MHz. This result paves the way to compact, fully integrated RF detection and channelization.

Topological protection of biphoton states.

The robust generation and propagation of multiphoton quantum states are crucial for applications in quantum information, computing, and communications. Although photons are intrinsically well isolated from the thermal environment, scaling to large quantum optical devices is still limited by scattering loss and other errors arising from random fabrication imperfections. The recent discoveries regarding topological phases have introduced avenues to construct quantum systems that are protected against scattering and imperfections. We experimentally demonstrate topological protection of biphoton states, the building block for quantum information systems. We provide clear evidence of the robustness of the spatial features and the propagation constant of biphoton states generated within a nanophotonics lattice with nontrivial topology and propose a concrete path to build robust entangled states for quantum gates.

On-chip multi-stage optical delay based on cascaded Brillouin light storage.

Storing and delaying optical signals plays a crucial role in data centers, phased array antennas, communication, and future computing architectures. Here, we show a delay scheme based on cascaded Brillouin light storage that achieves multi-stage delay at arbitrary positions within a photonic integrated circuit. Importantly these multiple resonant transfers between the optical and acoustic domain are controlled solely via external optical control pulses, allowing cascading of the delay without the need of aligning multiple structural resonances along the optical circuit.

Integrated silicon nitride time-bin entanglement circuits.

Time-bin entangled photons allow robust entanglement distribution over quantum networks. Integrated photonic circuits positioned at the nodes of a quantum network can perform the important functions of generating highly entangled photons and precisely manipulating their quantum state. In this Letter, we demonstrate time-bin entangled photon generation, noise suppression, wavelength division, and entanglement analysis on a single photonic chip utilizing low-loss double-stripe silicon nitride waveguide structures. Quantum state tomography results show 91±0.7% fidelity compared with the ideal state, indicating that highly entangled photons are generated and analyzed. This work represents a crucial step toward practical quantum networks.

Brillouin spectroscopy of a hybrid silicon-chalcogenide waveguide with geometrical variations.

Recent advances in design and fabrication of photonic-phononic waveguides have enabled stimulated Brillouin scattering in silicon-based platforms such as underetched silicon waveguides and hybrid waveguides. Due to the sophisticated design and, more importantly, high sensitivity of the Brillouin resonances to geometrical variations in micro- and nano-scale structures, it is necessary to have access to the localized opto-acoustic response along those waveguides to monitor their uniformity and maximize their interaction strength. In this Letter, we design and fabricate photonic-phononic waveguides with a deliberate width variation on a hybrid silicon-chalcogenide photonic chip and confirm the effect of the geometrical variation on the localized Brillouin response using a distributed Brillouin measurement.

Multiphoton Interference in the Spectral Domain by Direct Heralding of Frequency Superposition States.

Multiphoton interference is central to photonic quantum information processing and quantum simulation, usually requiring multiple sources of nonclassical light followed by a unitary transformation on their modes. We observe interference in the four-photon events generated by a single silicon waveguide, where the different modes are six frequency channels. Rather than requiring a unitary transformation, the frequency correlations of the source are configured such that photons are generated in superposition states across multiple channels, and interference effects can be seen without further manipulation. The frequency correlations of the source also mean that it is effectively acting as multiple pair photon sources, generating photons in different spectral modes, which interfere with each other in a nontrivial manner. This suggests joint spectral engineering is a tool for controlling complex quantum photonic states without the difficulty of implementing spatially separate sources or a large unitary interferometer, which could have practical benefits in various applications of multiphoton interference.