An optical phased array (OPA), the most promising non-mechanical beam steering technique, has great potential for solid-state light detection and ranging systems, holographic imaging, and free-space optical communications. A high quality beam with low sidelobes is crucial for long-distance free-space transmission and detection. However, most previously reported OPAs suffer from high sidelobe levels, and few efforts are devoted to reducing sidelobe levels in both azimuthal (φ) and polar (θ) directions. To solve this issue, we propose a Y-splitter-assisted cascaded coupling scheme to realize Gaussian power distribution in the azimuthal direction, which overcomes the bottleneck in the conventional cascaded coupling scheme and significantly increases the sidelobe suppression ratio (SLSR) in the φ direction from 20 to 66 dB in theory for a 120-channel OPA. Moreover, we designed an apodized grating emitter to realize Gaussian power distribution in the polar direction to increase the SLSR. Based on both designs, we experimentally demonstrated a 120-channel OPA with dual-Gaussian power distribution in both φ and θ directions. The SLSRs in φ and θ directions are measured to be 15.1dB and 25dB, respectively. Furthermore, we steer the beam to the maximum field of view of 25°×13.2° with a periodic 2λ pitch (3.1 μm). The maximum total power consumption is only 0.332 W with a thermo-optic efficiency of 2.7mW/π.

Silicon photonics integrated with graphene provides a promising solution to realize integrated photodetectors operating at the communication window thanks to graphene’s ultrafast response and compatibility with CMOS fabrication process. However, current hybrid graphene/silicon photodetectors suffer from low responsivity due to the weak light-graphene interaction. Plasmonic structures have been explored to enhance the responsivity, but the intrinsic metallic Ohmic absorption of the plasmonic mode limits its performance. In this work, by combining the silicon slot and the plasmonic slot waveguide, we demonstrate a novel double slot structure supporting high-performance photodetection, taking advantages of both silicon photonics and plasmonics. With the optimized structural parameters, the double slot structure significantly promotes graphene absorption while maintaining low metallic absorption within the double slot waveguide. Based on the double slot structure, the demonstrated photodetector holds a high responsivity of 603.92 mA/W and a large bandwidth of 78 GHz. The high-performance photodetector provides a competitive solution for the silicon photodetector. Moreover, the double slot structure could be beneficial to a broader range of hybrid two-dimensional material/silicon devices to achieve stronger light-matter interaction with lower metallic absorption.Silicon photonics integrated with graphene provides a promising solution to realize integrated photodetectors operating at the communication window thanks to graphene’s ultrafast response and compatibility with CMOS fabrication process. However, current hybrid graphene/silicon photodetectors suffer from low responsivity due to the weak light-graphene interaction. Plasmonic structures have been explored to enhance the responsivity, but the intrinsic metallic Ohmic absorption of the plasmonic mode limits its performance. In this work, by combining the silicon slot and the plasmonic slot waveguide, we demonstrate a novel double slot structure supporting high-performance photodetection, taking advantages of both silicon photonics and plasmonics. With the optimized structural parameters, the double slot structure significantly promotes graphene absorption while maintaining low metallic absorption within the double slot waveguide. Based on the double slot structure, the demonstrated photodetector holds a high responsivity of 603.92 mA/W and a large bandwidth of 78 GHz. The high-performance photodetector provides a competitive solution for the silicon photodetector. Moreover, the double slot structure could be beneficial to a broader range of hybrid two-dimensional material/silicon devices to achieve stronger light-matter interaction with lower metallic absorption.

Encircling an exceptional point (EP) in a parity-time (PT) symmetric system has shown great potential for chiral optical devices, such as chiral mode switching for symmetric and antisymmetric modes. However, to our best knowledge, chiral switching for polarization states has never been reported, although chiral polarization manipulation has significant applications in imaging, sensing, communication, etc. Here, inspired by the anti-PT symmetry, we demonstrate, for the first time to our best knowledge, an on-chip chiral polarizer by constructing a polarization-coupled anti-PT symmetric system. The transmission axes of the chiral polarizer are different for forward and backward propagation. A polarization extinction ratio of over 10 dB is achieved for both propagating directions. Moreover, a telecommunication experiment is performed to demonstrate the potential applications in polarization encoding signals. It provides a novel functionality for encircling-an-EP parametric evolution and offers a new approach for on-chip chiral polarization manipulation.

The hybrid multiplexing technique reactivates optical interconnect as it offers multiple dimensions to dramatically enhance the data capacity of a single wavelength carrier. A straightforward method to realize hybrid multiplexing is to perform polarization multiplexing for mode-multiplexed signals, by utilizing a mode-transparent polarization beam splitter (MTPBS) which can process multiple modes simultaneously. However, present PBSs mainly work in the single-mode regime, and it is not easy to redesign the conventional PBS to accommodate multiple modes, due to the severe mode dispersion. Here, a novel MTPBS, which can tackle a group of modes simultaneously, is proposed and demonstrated. As a demonstration, the MTPBS supporting a total channel number of 13 is experimentally achieved, with low insertion loss and low modal/polarization cross talk. This work provides a new insight to realize hybrid multiplexing and represents a solution for high-density and large-capacity photonic integration.

Tunable optical delay lines are one of the key building blocks in optical communication and microwave systems. In this work, tunable optical delay lines based on integrated grating-assisted contradirectional couplers are proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The device performance is comprehensively improved in terms of parameter optimization, apodization analysis, and electrode design. Tunable group delay lines of 50 ps at different wavelengths within the bandwidth of 12 nm are realized with a grating length of 1.8 mm. Under thermal tuning mode, the actual delay tuning range is around 20 ps at 7.2 V voltage. At last, a new scheme adopting an ultra-compact reflector for doubling group delay is proposed and verified, achieving a large group delay line of 400 ps and a large dispersion value up to 5.5×106 ps/(nm·km) within bandwidth of 12 nm. Under thermal tuning mode, the actual delay tuning range is around 100 ps at 8 V voltage.

To achieve photon-pair generation scaling, we optimize the quality factor of microring resonators for efficient continuous-wave-pumped spontaneous four-wave mixing. Numerical studies indicate that a high intrinsic quality factor makes high pair rate and pair brightness possible, in which the maximums take place under overcoupling and critical-coupling conditions, respectively. We fabricate six all-pass-type microring resonator samples on a silicon-on-insulator chip involving gap width as the only degree of freedom. The signal count rate, pair brightness, and coincidence rate of all the samples are characterized, which are then compared with the modified simulations by taking the detector saturation and nonlinear loss into account. Being experimentally validated for the first time to the best of our knowledge, this work explicitly demonstrates that reducing the round-trip loss in a ring cavity and designing the corresponding optimized gap width are more effective to generate high-rate or high-brightness photon pairs than the conventional strategy of simply increasing the quality factor.