eLightPub Date : 2024-04-04DOI: 10.1186/s43593-024-00062-w
Chanju Kim, Xinda Lu, Deming Kong, Nuo Chen, Yuntian Chen, Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe, Kresten Yvind, Xinliang Zhang, Lan Yang, Minhao Pu, Jing Xu
{"title":"Parity-time symmetry enabled ultra-efficient nonlinear optical signal processing","authors":"Chanju Kim, Xinda Lu, Deming Kong, Nuo Chen, Yuntian Chen, Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe, Kresten Yvind, Xinliang Zhang, Lan Yang, Minhao Pu, Jing Xu","doi":"10.1186/s43593-024-00062-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s43593-024-00062-w","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":72891,"journal":{"name":"eLight","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140588359","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
eLightPub Date : 2024-03-05DOI: 10.1186/s43593-024-00061-x
Ze-Yu Wang, Zhou Zhou, Han Zhang, Yang Wei, Hong-Guan Yu, Wei Hu, Wei Chen, Hai-Tao Dai, Ling-Ling Ma, Cheng-Wei Qiu, Yan-Qing Lu
{"title":"Vectorial liquid-crystal holography","authors":"Ze-Yu Wang, Zhou Zhou, Han Zhang, Yang Wei, Hong-Guan Yu, Wei Hu, Wei Chen, Hai-Tao Dai, Ling-Ling Ma, Cheng-Wei Qiu, Yan-Qing Lu","doi":"10.1186/s43593-024-00061-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s43593-024-00061-x","url":null,"abstract":"Vectorial optics with fine inhomogeneous polarization control are highly desired. Metasurfaces have been captivated a promising candidate, but their static post-fabrication geometry largely limits the dynamic tunability. Liquid crystal (LC) is usually employed as an additional index-changing layer together with metasurfaces. Unfortunately, most of the reported LCs only impart a varying but uniform phase on top of that from the metasurface, which we term “scalar” LC optics. Here, we pixelate a single-layer LC to display versatile and tunable vectorial holography, in which the polarization and amplitude could be arbitrarily and independently controlled at varying spatial positions. Furthermore, the subtle and vectorial LC-holography highlights the broadband and electrically-switchable functionalities. Our vectorial LC holography reveals significant opportunities for advanced cryptography, super-resolution imaging, and many other applications.","PeriodicalId":72891,"journal":{"name":"eLight","volume":"171 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140036037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
eLightPub Date : 2024-02-05DOI: 10.1186/s43593-023-00059-x
Yueyang Liu, Tian Dong, Xu Qin, Weijia Luo, Ning Leng, Yujing He, Yong Yuan, Ming Bai, Jingbo Sun, Ji Zhou, Yue Li, Yang Li
{"title":"High-permittivity ceramics enabled highly homogeneous zero-index metamaterials for high-directivity antennas and beyond","authors":"Yueyang Liu, Tian Dong, Xu Qin, Weijia Luo, Ning Leng, Yujing He, Yong Yuan, Ming Bai, Jingbo Sun, Ji Zhou, Yue Li, Yang Li","doi":"10.1186/s43593-023-00059-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s43593-023-00059-x","url":null,"abstract":"Zero-index metamaterials (ZIMs) can support uniform electromagnetic field distributions at any frequency, but their applications are hampered by the ZIM’s homogenization level—only 3 unit cells per free-space wavelength, which is fundamentally limited by the low-permittivity inclusions (εr ≈ 12) and background matrix (εr ≈ 1). Here, by filling high-permittivity SrTiO3 ceramic (εr ≈ 294) pillars in BaTiO3 (εr ≈ 25) background matrix, we demonstrate a highly homogeneous microwave ZIM with an over threefold increase in the homogenization level. Leveraging such a ZIM, we achieve not only an antenna, approaching the fundamental limit in the directivity with outstanding scalability, but also a concave lens with a focal length of as short as 1λ0. Our highly homogeneous ZIM has profound implications in ceramics, ZIM-based waveguides and cavities, free-space wavefront manipulation, and microwave quantum optics, and opens up enormous possibilities in wireless communications, remote sensing, global positioning satellites, etc.","PeriodicalId":72891,"journal":{"name":"eLight","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139690151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Integral imaging near-eye 3D display using a nanoimprint metalens array","authors":"Zhi-Bin Fan, Yun-Fan Cheng, Ze-Ming Chen, Xia Liu, Wen-Long Lu, Shi-Hao Li, Shao-Ji Jiang, Zong Qin, Jian-Wen Dong","doi":"10.1186/s43593-023-00055-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s43593-023-00055-1","url":null,"abstract":"<h3>Abstract</h3> <p>Integral imaging (II) display, one of the most critical true-3D display technologies, has received increasing research recently. Significantly, an achromatic metalens array has realized a broadband metalens-array-based II (meta-II). However, the past micro-scale metalens arrays were incompatible with commercial micro-displays; furthermore, the elemental image array (EIA) rendering is always slow. The two hinders in device and algorithm prevent meta-II from being used for practical video-rate near-eye displays (NEDs). This research demonstrates a meta-II NED combining a commercial micro-display and a metalens array. The large-area nanoimprint technology fabricates the metalens array, and a novel real-time rendering algorithm is proposed to generate the EIA. The hardware and software efforts solve the bottlenecks of video-rate meta-II displays. We also build a see-through prototype based on our meta-II NED, demonstrating the feasibility of augmented reality. Our work explores the potential of video-rate meta-II displays, which we expect can be valuable for future virtual and augmented reality.</p>","PeriodicalId":72891,"journal":{"name":"eLight","volume":"104 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139515234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Synthesized complex-frequency excitation for ultrasensitive molecular sensing","authors":"Kebo Zeng, Chenchen Wu, Xiangdong Guo, Fuxin Guan, Yu Duan, Lauren L. Zhang, Xiaoxia Yang, Na Liu, Qing Dai, Shuang Zhang","doi":"10.1186/s43593-023-00058-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s43593-023-00058-y","url":null,"abstract":"<h3>Abstract</h3> <p>Sensors have emerged as indispensable analytical tools across a wide range of important fields, encompassing environmental monitoring, food safety, and public health. They facilitate early disease diagnosis, personalized medicine, and rapid detection of toxic agents. However, detecting trace molecules remains a significant challenge. Surface-enhanced infrared absorption (SEIRA) based on plasmonic nanostructures, particularly graphene, has emerged as a promising approach to enhance sensing sensitivity. While graphene-based SEIRA offers advantages such as high sensitivity and active tunability, intrinsic molecular damping weakens the interaction between vibrational modes and plasmons. Here, we demonstrate ultrahigh-sensitive molecular sensing based on synthesized complex-frequency waves (CFW). Our experiment shows that CFW can amplify the molecular signals (silk protein monolayer) detected by graphene-based sensor by at least an order of magnitude and can be universally applied to molecular sensing in different phases. Our approach is highly scalable and can facilitate the investigation of light-matter interactions, enabling diverse potential applications in fields such as optical spectroscopy, biomedicine and pharmaceutics.</p>","PeriodicalId":72891,"journal":{"name":"eLight","volume":"55 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139102573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Correction: Waveguide-based augmented reality displays: perspectives and challenges","authors":"Yuqiang Ding, Qian Yang, Yannanqi Li, Zhiyong Yang, Zhengyang Wang, Haowen Liang, Shin‑Tson Wu","doi":"10.1186/s43593-023-00060-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s43593-023-00060-4","url":null,"abstract":"<br/><p><b>Correction: eLight (2023) 3:24 </b><b>https://doi.org/10.1186/s43593-023-00057-z</b></p><br/><p>After publication of this article [1], it was brought to our attention that the first author's name Yuqian Ding is incorrect, the correct name is Yuqiang Ding.</p><br/><p>The original publication has been corrected.</p><ol data-track-component=\"outbound reference\"><li data-counter=\"1.\"><p>Y. Ding, Q. Yang, Y. Li, Z. Yang, Z. Wang, H. Liang, W. Shin-Tson, Waveguide-based augmented reality displays: perspectives and challenges. eLight <b>3</b>, 24 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s43593-023-00057-z</p><p>Article Google Scholar </p></li></ol><p>Download references<svg aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\" height=\"16\" role=\"img\" width=\"16\"><use xlink:href=\"#icon-eds-i-download-medium\" xmlns:xlink=\"http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink\"></use></svg></p><h3>Authors and Affiliations</h3><ol><li><p>College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, 32816, USA</p><p>Yuqiang Ding, Qian Yang, Yannanqi Li, Zhiyong Yang & Shin‑Tson Wu</p></li><li><p>State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, School of Physics, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China</p><p>Zhengyang Wang & Haowen Liang</p></li></ol><span>Authors</span><ol><li><span>Yuqiang Ding</span>View author publications<p>You can also search for this author in <span>PubMed<span> </span>Google Scholar</span></p></li><li><span>Qian Yang</span>View author publications<p>You can also search for this author in <span>PubMed<span> </span>Google Scholar</span></p></li><li><span>Yannanqi Li</span>View author publications<p>You can also search for this author in <span>PubMed<span> </span>Google Scholar</span></p></li><li><span>Zhiyong Yang</span>View author publications<p>You can also search for this author in <span>PubMed<span> </span>Google Scholar</span></p></li><li><span>Zhengyang Wang</span>View author publications<p>You can also search for this author in <span>PubMed<span> </span>Google Scholar</span></p></li><li><span>Haowen Liang</span>View author publications<p>You can also search for this author in <span>PubMed<span> </span>Google Scholar</span></p></li><li><span>Shin‑Tson Wu</span>View author publications<p>You can also search for this author in <span>PubMed<span> </span>Google Scholar</span></p></li></ol><h3>Corresponding authors</h3><p>Correspondence to Haowen Liang or Shin‑Tson Wu.</p><p><b>Open Access</b> This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not incl","PeriodicalId":72891,"journal":{"name":"eLight","volume":"69 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139102700","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
eLightPub Date : 2024-01-01Epub Date: 2024-10-10DOI: 10.1186/s43593-024-00075-5
Qi-Fan Yang, Yaowen Hu, Victor Torres-Company, Kerry Vahala
{"title":"Efficient microresonator frequency combs.","authors":"Qi-Fan Yang, Yaowen Hu, Victor Torres-Company, Kerry Vahala","doi":"10.1186/s43593-024-00075-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s43593-024-00075-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The rapid development of optical frequency combs from their table-top origins towards chip-scale platforms has opened up exciting possibilities for comb functionalities outside laboratories. Enhanced nonlinear processes in microresonators have emerged as a mainstream comb-generating mechanism with compelling advantages in size, weight, and power consumption. The established understanding of gain and loss in nonlinear microresonators, along with recently developed ultralow-loss nonlinear photonic circuitry, has boosted the optical energy conversion efficiency of microresonator frequency comb (microcomb) devices from below a few percent to above 50%. This review summarizes the latest advances in novel photonic devices and pumping strategies that contribute to these milestones of microcomb efficiency. The resulting benefits for high-performance integration of comb applications are also discussed before summarizing the remaining challenges.</p>","PeriodicalId":72891,"journal":{"name":"eLight","volume":"4 1","pages":"18"},"PeriodicalIF":27.2,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11481671/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142482281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Waveguide-based augmented reality displays: perspectives and challenges","authors":"Yuqian Ding, Qian Yang, Yannanqi Li, Zhiyong Yang, Zhengyang Wang, Haowen Liang, Shin-Tson Wu","doi":"10.1186/s43593-023-00057-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s43593-023-00057-z","url":null,"abstract":"Augmented reality (AR) displays, as the next generation platform for spatial computing and digital twins, enable users to view digital images superimposed on real-world environment, fostering a deeper level of human-digital interactions. However, as a critical element in an AR system, optical combiners face unprecedented challenges to match the exceptional performance requirements of human vision system while keeping the headset ultracompact and lightweight. After decades of extensive device and material research efforts, and heavy investment in manufacturing technologies, several promising waveguide combiners have been developed. In this review paper, we focus on the perspectives and challenges of optical waveguide combiners for AR displays. We will begin by introducing the basic device structures and operation principles of different AR architectures, and then delve into different waveguide combiners, including geometric and diffractive waveguide combiners. Some commonly used in-couplers and out-couplers, such as prisms, mirrors, surface relief gratings, volume holographic gratings, polarization volume gratings, and metasurface-based couplers, will be discussed, and their properties analyzed in detail. Additionally, we will explore recent advances in waveguide combiner design and modeling, such as exit pupil expansion, wide field of view, geometric architectures of waveguide couplers, full-color propagation, and brightness and color uniformity optimization. Finally, we will discuss the bottlenecks and future development trends in waveguide combiner technologies. The objective of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of waveguide combiner technologies, analyze their pros and cons, and then present the future challenges of AR displays.","PeriodicalId":72891,"journal":{"name":"eLight","volume":"108 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138548394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
eLightPub Date : 2023-11-27DOI: 10.1186/s43593-023-00056-0
Chao He, Jacopo Antonello, Martin J. Booth
{"title":"Vectorial adaptive optics","authors":"Chao He, Jacopo Antonello, Martin J. Booth","doi":"10.1186/s43593-023-00056-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s43593-023-00056-0","url":null,"abstract":"Adaptive optics normally concerns the feedback correction of phase aberrations. Such correction has been of benefit in various optical systems, with applications ranging in scale from astronomical telescopes to super-resolution microscopes. Here we extend this powerful tool into the vectorial domain, encompassing higher-dimensional feedback correction of both polarisation and phase. This technique is termed vectorial adaptive optics (V-AO). We show that V-AO can be implemented using sensor feedback, indirectly using sensorless AO, or in hybrid form combining aspects of both. We validate improvements in both vector field state and the focal quality of an optical system, through correction for commonplace vectorial aberration sources, ranging from objective lenses to biological samples. This technique pushes the boundaries of traditional scalar beam shaping by providing feedback control of extra vectorial degrees of freedom. This paves the way for next generation AO functionality by manipulating the complex vectorial field.","PeriodicalId":72891,"journal":{"name":"eLight","volume":"67 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138540696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
eLightPub Date : 2023-10-25DOI: 10.1186/s43593-023-00053-3
Keng-Te Lin, Xianbo Nian, Ke Li, Jihong Han, Nan Zheng, Xiaokang Lu, Chunsheng Guo, Han Lin, Baohua Jia
{"title":"Highly efficient flexible structured metasurface by roll-to-roll printing for diurnal radiative cooling","authors":"Keng-Te Lin, Xianbo Nian, Ke Li, Jihong Han, Nan Zheng, Xiaokang Lu, Chunsheng Guo, Han Lin, Baohua Jia","doi":"10.1186/s43593-023-00053-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s43593-023-00053-3","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract An ideal radiative cooler requires accurate spectral control capability to achieve efficient thermal emission in the atmospheric transparency window (8–13 μm), low solar absorption, good stability, scalability, and a simple structure for effective diurnal radiative cooling. Flexible cooling films made from polymer relying on polymer intrinsic absorbance represent a cost-effective solution but lack accuracy in spectral control. Here, we propose and demonstrate a metasurface concept enabled by periodically arranged three-dimensional (3D) trench-like structures in a thin layer of polymer for high-performance radiative cooling. The structured polymer metasurface radiative cooler is manufactured by a roll-to-roll printing method. It exhibits superior spectral breadth and selectivity, which offers outstanding omnidirectional absorption/emission (96.1%) in the atmospheric transparency window, low solar absorption (4.8%), and high stability. Impressive cooling power of 129.8 W m −2 and temperature deduction of 7 °C on a clear sky midday have been achieved, promising broad practical applications in energy saving and passive heat dispersion fields.","PeriodicalId":72891,"journal":{"name":"eLight","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134972776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}