Experimental realization of Bloch oscillations in a parity-time synthetic silicon photonic lattice

Abstract

As an important electron transportation phenomenon, Bloch oscillations have been extensively studied in condensed matter. Due to the similarity in wave properties between electrons and other quantum particles, Bloch oscillations have been observed in atom lattices, photonic lattices, and so on. One of the many distinct advantages for choosing these systems over the regular electronic systems is the versatility in engineering artificial potentials. Here by utilizing dissipative elements in a CMOS-compatible photonic platform to create a periodic complex potential and by exploiting the emerging concept of parity-time synthetic photonics, we experimentally realize spatial Bloch oscillations in a non-Hermitian photonic system on a chip level. Our demonstration may have significant impact in the field of quantum simulation by following the recent trend of moving complicated table-top quantum optics experiments onto the fully integrated CMOS-compatible silicon platform.

Floquet engineering of localized propagation of light in a waveguide array

“…Tremendous progress has been made in tailoring the light flowing in the spatially periodic structure. The optical Bloch oscillation has been proposed in the waveguide array by using linearly varying propagation constants to simulate the dc field [6,[20][21][22]. * anjhong@lzu.edu.cn It was observed in waveguide arrays [8,23] even with periodic curvature along the propagation direction [24].…”

Experimental Demonstration of an Acoustic Asymmetric Diffraction Grating Based on Passive Parity-Time-Symmetric Medium

“…In recent years, non-Hermitian system with PT-symmetric potential has been widely applied in fields of classic waves because of the similarity between Schrodinger equation and classic wave equation . Many unconventional phenomena in optics have been demonstrated, including Bloch oscillation [6,7], optical isolation [8,9], unidirectional invisibility or reflectionless effect [10][11][12], coherent perfect absorption (CPA) and lasing [15][16][17][18][19][20]31]. In addition, many interesting acoustic effects of PT symmetry, such as one-way cloak [32], invisible sensing [22] and sound absorption [33], have also drawn much attention.…”

Z2 topological edge state in honeycomb lattice of coupled resonant optical waveguides with a flat band

“…On the other side, non-Hermitian photonic systems have drawn much research interest [19][20][21][22][23]. Such systems possess an anomalous symmetry-breaking transition [24], giving rise to abundant intriguing physical phenomena such as unidirectional transmission [25], asymmetric mode conversion [26] , PT laser [27,28] and so on [29,30]. The pertinent physical effects induced via introducing the gain/loss medium into the honeycomb CROW structure with PT symmetry are studied here.…”