Abstract
Abstract With the great developments in optical communication technology and large-scale optical integration technology, it is imperative to realize the traditional functions of polarization processing on an integration platform. Most of the existing polarization devices, such as polarization multiplexers/demultiplexers, polarization controllers, polarization analyzers, etc., perform only a single function. Definitely, integrating all these polarization functions on a chip will increase function flexibility and integration density and also cut the cost. In this article, we demonstrate an all-in-one chip-scale polarization processor based on a linear optical network. The polarization functions can be configured by tuning the array of phase shifters on the chip. We demonstrate multiple polarization processing functions, including those of a multiple-input-multiple-output polarization descrambler, polarization controller, and polarization analyzer, which are the basic building blocks of polarization processing. More functions can be realized by using an additional two-dimensional output grating. A numerical gradient descent algorithm is employed to self-configure and self-optimize these functions. Our demonstration suggests great potential for chip-scale, reconfigurable, and fully programmable photonic polarization processors with the artificial intelligence algorithm.
Highlights
Polarization, as one of the fundamental physical characteristics of light, has a great impact on many fields of photonics, including optical communication [1,2,3], optical imaging [4], and quantum optics [5]
We demonstrate an all-in-one chip-scale polarization processor based on a linear optical network
We propose an all-in-one chip-scale polarization processor based on a linear optical network
Summary
Polarization, as one of the fundamental physical characteristics of light, has a great impact on many fields of photonics, including optical communication [1,2,3], optical imaging [4], and quantum optics [5]. With the rapid development of large-scale optical integration technology, numerous on-chip polarization processing devices have been proposed, such as the polarization beam splitter (PBS) [6,7,8,9], polarization splitter-rotator (PSR) [10], polarization rotator (PR) [11, 12], polarization controller [13,14,15,16], and polarization analyzer [17,18,19,20,21], since an integrated photonic polarization device usually has a much smaller footprint and higher power efficiency These functions are the basic building blocks for polarization signal processing and show important applications. Other devices for radio frequency applications [35] and photonics signal processing [36,37,38,39] have been reported These programmable optical processors show great advantages in reconfigurability and self-configuration capability. Our demonstration suggests great potential for chip-scale reconfigurable and fully programmable photonic polarization processing with the artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm
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