Compact broadband silicon-integrated Airy beam emitter.

Abstract

Optical Airy beams have wide-ranging applications in photonics, but conventional approaches for generating Airy beams require bulky and strictly aligned optical systems. Here, we propose on-chip compact Airy beam emitters by using a shallow-etched holography grating on a silicon platform. The holography grating, formed by the binary interferogram of the guided wave and the spatial Airy beam, can scatter the guided waves into spatial waves with the phase distributions being consistent with those of Airy beam. The simulation demonstrates that a 20µm×20µm holography grating on a strip waveguide enables the realization of 2D Airy beam within the wavelength range from 1490 to 1570 nm. Our results suggest a promising avenue towards potential applications in on-chip imaging, optical forces, optical interconnection, etc.