Ultra-broadband on-chip twisted light emitter for optical communications

Zhenwei Xie; Ting Lei; Fan Li; Haodong Qiu; Zecen Zhang; Hong Wang; Changjun Min; Luping Du; Zhaohui Li; Xiaocong Yuan

doi:10.1038/lsa.2018.1

Ultra-broadband on-chip twisted light emitter for optical communications

Light Sci Appl. 2018 Apr 20:7:18001. doi: 10.1038/lsa.2018.1. eCollection 2018.

Authors

Zhenwei Xie¹, Ting Lei¹, Fan Li², Haodong Qiu³, Zecen Zhang³, Hong Wang³, Changjun Min¹, Luping Du¹, Zhaohui Li², Xiaocong Yuan¹

Affiliations

¹ Nanophotonics Research Center, Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Micro-scale Optical Information Technology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies and School of Electronics and Information Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China.
³ School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore.

Abstract

On-chip twisted light emitters are essential components of orbital angular momentum (OAM) communication devices^{1, 2}. These devices address the growing demand for high-capacity communication systems by providing an additional degree of freedom for wavelength/frequency division multiplexing (WDM/FDM). Although whispering-gallery-mode-enabled OAM emitters have been shown to possess some advantages^{3, 4, 5}, such as compactness and phase accuracy, their inherent narrow bandwidths prevent them from being compatible with WDM/FDM techniques. Here, we demonstrate an ultra-broadband multiplexed OAM emitter that utilizes a novel joint path-resonance phase control concept. The emitter has a micron-sized radius and nanometer-sized features. Coaxial OAM beams are emitted across the entire telecommunication band from 1,450 to 1,650 nm. We applied the emitter to an OAM communication with a data rate of 1.2 Tbit/s assisted by 30-channel optical frequency combs (OFCs). The emitter provides a new solution to further increase capacity in the OFC communication scenario.