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Observation of parity-time symmetry in microwave photonics.

ABSTRACT: Symmetry plays a crucial role in explorations of the laws of nature. Parity-time (PT) symmetry phenomena can lead to entirely real spectra in non-Hermitian systems, which attracts considerable attention in the fields of optics and electronics because these phenomena provide a new tool for the manipulation of oscillation modes and non-reciprocal signal transmission. A potential new field of application is microwave photonics, an interdisciplinary field in which the interaction between microwaves and optical signals is exploited. In this article, we report the experimental use of PT symmetry in an optoelectronic oscillator (OEO), a key microwave photonics system that can generate single-frequency sinusoidal signals with high spectral purity. PT symmetry is theoretically analyzed and experimentally observed in an OEO with two mutually coupled active oscillation cavities via a precise manipulation of the interplay between gain and loss in the two oscillation cavities. Stable single-frequency microwave oscillation is achieved without using any optical/electrical filters for oscillation mode selection, which is an indispensable requirement in traditional OEOs. This observation opens new avenues for signal generation and processing based on the PT symmetry principle in microwave photonics.

SUBMITTER: Liu Y

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6107014 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Observation of parity-time symmetry in microwave photonics.

Liu Yanzhong Y Hao Tengfei T Li Wei W Capmany Jose J Zhu Ninghua N Li Ming M

Light, science & applications 20180718

Symmetry plays a crucial role in explorations of the laws of nature. Parity-time (PT) symmetry phenomena can lead to entirely real spectra in non-Hermitian systems, which attracts considerable attention in the fields of optics and electronics because these phenomena provide a new tool for the manipulation of oscillation modes and non-reciprocal signal transmission. A potential new field of application is microwave photonics, an interdisciplinary field in which the interaction between microwaves ...[more]

PMID: 30839583

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Project description:Nonlinear optical signal processing (NOSP) has the potential to significantly improve the throughput, flexibility, and cost-efficiency of optical communication networks by exploiting the intrinsically ultrafast optical nonlinear wave mixing. It can support digital signal processing speeds of up to terabits per second, far exceeding the line rate of the electronic counterpart. In NOSP, high-intensity light fields are used to generate nonlinear optical responses, which can be used to process optical signals. Great efforts have been devoted to developing new materials and structures for NOSP. However, one of the challenges in implementing NOSP is the requirement of high-intensity light fields, which is difficult to generate and maintain. This has been a major roadblock to realize practical NOSP systems for high-speed, high-capacity optical communications. Here, we propose using a parity-time (PT) symmetric microresonator system to significantly enhance the light intensity and support high-speed operation by relieving the bandwidth-efficiency limit imposed on conventional single resonator systems. The design concept is the co-existence of a PT symmetry broken regime for a narrow-linewidth pump wave and near-exceptional point operation for broadband signal and idler waves. This enables us to achieve a new NOSP system with two orders of magnitude improvement in efficiency compared to a single resonator. With a highly nonlinear AlGaAs-on-Insulator platform, we demonstrate an NOSP at a data rate approaching 40 gigabits per second with a record low pump power of one milliwatt. These findings pave the way for the development of fully chip-scale NOSP devices with pump light sources integrated together, potentially leading to a wide range of applications in optical communication networks and classical or quantum computation. The combination of PT symmetry and NOSP may also open up opportunities for amplification, detection, and sensing, where response speed and efficiency are equally important.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s43593-024-00062-w.

Dataset Information

Observation of parity-time symmetry in microwave photonics.

Publications

Observation of parity-time symmetry in microwave photonics.

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