Topological photonic orbital-angular-momentum switch

Abstract

The large number of available orbital angular momentum (OAM) states of photons provides a unique resource for many important applications in quantum information and optical communications. However, conventional OAM switching devices usually rely on precise parameter control and are limited by slow switching rate and low efficiency. Here we propose a robust, fast and efficient photonic OAM switch device based on a topological process, where photons are adiabatically pumped to a target OAM state on demand. Such topological OAM pumping can be realized through manipulating photons in a few degenerate main cavities and involves only a limited number of optical elements. A large change of OAM at ∼ 10 q can be realized with only q degenerate main cavities and at most 5q pumping cycles. The topological photonic OAM switch may become a powerful device for broad applications in many different fields and motivate novel topological design of conventional optical devices. arXiv:1706.08230v2 [quant-ph]

Topological phases in ring resonators: recent progress and future prospects

“…Besides studying topological physics in real space, dynamically modulated resonators also provide a unique platform to explore higher dimensional topological physics in lower dimensional physical systems, by incorporating synthetic dimensions in photonics [6,7]. Inspired by earlier works of synthetic dimensions in lattice systems [103][104][105], resonators supporting multiple degenerate modes with different orbital angular momentum (OAM) have been used to simulate the topological physics, where the synthetic dimension is constructed by coupling modes with different OAM using a pair of spatial light modulators [106][107][108][109].…”

Photonic Gauge Potential in One Cavity with Synthetic Frequency and Orbital Angular Momentum Dimensions

“…The synthetic dimension in photonics has been explored with great interest in the past few years [1][2][3][4][5][6]. Various degrees of freedom of photons, such as their frequency [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] and their orbital angular momentum (OAM) [4,[15][16][17][18], have been used to construct the synthetic space. By combining the spatial dimension with either the frequency or the OAM dimension, one can use a one-dimensional array of optical cavities to create a two-dimensional synthetic space [4][5][6].…”

Synthesizing arbitrary lattice models using a single degenerate cavity

“…Simulating synthetic dimensions using different systems presents an important frontier in quantum simulation and has received great attention in recent years . Physically, synthetic dimensions not only enable us to simulate various novel physics in a simple and economic way, it also provides the opportunity of exploring new physics that cannot be implemented in conventional materials, such as topologically non-trivial high dimensional systems [5,8,12,13,23], synthetic metamaterials [8,10,20,22], etc. Currently, various degrees of freedom have been considered to act as synthetic dimensions.…”

“…For photonic systems, synthetic dimensions can be implemented using the photonic orbital angular momentum (OAM) degrees of freedom [16][17][18][19][20][21][22], or the photonic frequency comb with equal-distant level splittings [7,9,23]. Constructing photonic synthetic dimensions based on photonic OAM degrees of freedom was first proposed in [16] and discussed in more depth in Ref.…”

“…Constructing photonic synthetic dimensions based on photonic OAM degrees of freedom was first proposed in [16] and discussed in more depth in Ref. [17][18][19][20][21][22], where a cavity system supporting a large number of degenerate photonic modes with different angular momentum is constructed. The abundance of the OAM degrees of freedom becomes a sufficient resource that allows us to simulate various novel topological physics in high-dimensional systems in a very compact manner [16].…”