Zhou Changyu, Xie Youpeng, Ren Jianxin, Wei Zepeng, Du Luping, Zhang Qiang, Xie Zhenwei, Liu Bo, Lei Ting, Yuan Xiaocong
Nanophotonics Research Centre, Institute of Microscale Optoelectronics, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, China.
Institute of Optics and Electronics, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China.
Nanophotonics. 2021 Oct 14;11(4):813-819. doi: 10.1515/nanoph-2021-0455. eCollection 2022 Jan.
Polarimetry has been demonstrated essential in various disciplines, such as optical communications, imaging, and astronomy. On-chip nanostructures for polarization measurements are most expected to replace the conventional bulk elements, and hence minimize the polarimeter for integrated applications. Some on-chip nanophotonic polarimeter via polarization detection has been implemented, in which the separation of two spin polarized states is needed. However, due to the relatively low coupling efficiency or complicated photonic silicon circuits, on-chip polarimetry using a single device still remains challenging. Here, we introduce and investigate an on-chip polarimeter with nanostructures using the inverse design method. The developed device shows the ability to detect the four polarization components of light, two of which are the spin polarizations, and the other two are the linear polarizations. The retrieved Stokes parameters with experimentally tested data are in close agreement with the numerical results. We also show the proof of concept demonstration for high-speed Stokes vector optical signals detection. In the high-speed communication experiment with data rate up to 16 GBd, the detected optical signals via polarization measurements at multiple wavelengths in the C-band were recovered with the bit error rate below the 20% forward error correction threshold. The proposed on-chip polarimeter shows promising performance both in Stokes polarimetry and high-speed optical communication applications.
旋光测量已被证明在光学通信、成像和天文学等各个学科中至关重要。用于偏振测量的片上纳米结构最有望取代传统的块状元件，从而将用于集成应用的旋光仪小型化。已经实现了一些通过偏振检测的片上纳米光子旋光仪，其中需要分离两种自旋偏振态。然而，由于耦合效率相对较低或光子硅电路复杂，使用单个器件的片上旋光测量仍然具有挑战性。在此，我们介绍并研究一种采用逆向设计方法的具有纳米结构的片上旋光仪。所开发的器件能够检测光的四个偏振分量，其中两个是自旋偏振，另外两个是线性偏振。通过实验测试数据获取的斯托克斯参数与数值结果非常吻合。我们还展示了高速斯托克斯矢量光信号检测的概念验证演示。在数据速率高达16 GBd的高速通信实验中，通过在C波段多个波长处的偏振测量检测到的光信号得以恢复，误码率低于20%的前向纠错阈值。所提出的片上旋光仪在斯托克斯旋光测量和高速光通信应用中均展现出了有前景的性能。
