Fully Programmable Topological Photonic Chip Discovered by Peking University Team
TapTechNews May 22nd news, the team of researcher Wang Jianwei, Professor Hu Xiaoyong and Professor Gong Qihuang from the Extreme Optics Innovation Research Team of the Institute of Modern Optics, School of Physics, Peking University, along with their collaborators, recently proposed and implemented a fully programmable topological photonic chip based on large-scale integrated optics.
By integrating a large-scale reconfigurable array of optical microring resonators on a silicon chip, they achieved for the first time an arbitrarily programmable optical Floquet artificial atomic lattice, which can independently and accurately control each artificial atom and the coupling between atoms (including its random but controllable disorder), and then carried out a series of experimental studies including dynamic topological phase transitions, multi-lattice topological insulators, statistically related topological robustness, and Anderson topological insulators on a single chip.
This work broadens the boundary of topological photonics and endows it with strong reconfigurability and programmability for the first time, providing a brand new approach for studying topological materials science and developing topological photonics technology.
Related research results were published today (May 22, 2024) in the journal Nature Materials under the title A programmable topological photonic chip.
The topological chip is based on a reconfigurable array of integrated optical microring resonators, and integrates 2712 elements in a single chip within an area of 11mm × 7mm, including 96 high-quality factor microring resonator arrays (with quality factors all reaching above 105), 300 optical phase shifters and interferometers that can be independently regulated arbitrarily (with extinction ratios reaching above 50 dB).
The chip successfully achieved a fully programmable optical artificial atomic lattice for the first time. By regulating this topological chip, the arbitrary independent regulation of the transition intensity and transition phase between artificial atoms and the arbitrary construction of the lattice potential barrier can be achieved.
The research team carried out rapid and real-time programmable reconfiguration of the topological chip and realized different functions including the Floquet topological insulator phase transition excited by the coupling strength and phase respectively, the observation of topological phenomena related to statistical properties (statistical experimental proofs of topological robustness and topological Anderson phase transition), and the realization of topological insulators under various lattice structures (one-dimensional SSH topological insulator, one-dimensional non-Hermitian Floquet crystal, and Floquet topological insulator in two-dimensional square and honeycomb lattices).
TapTechNews attached the paper link:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-024-01904-1