Reconfigurable integrated full-dimensional optical lattice generator

TL;DR

This paper introduces a reconfigurable integrated optical lattice generator on a silicon chip that achieves full-dimensional control of light, enabling complex and reconfigurable optical lattices for advanced photonics applications.

Contribution

The work presents a novel integrated photonic device with independent control of amplitude, phase, and polarization, allowing dynamic generation of complex optical lattices in all three dimensions.

Findings

Successfully generated various optical vortex lattices.

Achieved independent control of amplitude, phase, and polarization.

Demonstrated reconfigurability of complex light patterns.

Abstract

Optical lattices with periodic potentials have attracted great attention in modern optics and photonics, enabling extensive applications in atomic manipulation, optical trapping, optical communications, imaging, sensing, etc. In the last decade, the generation of optical lattices has been widely investigated by various approaches such as multi-plane-wave interferometer, beam superposition, spatial light modulators, nanophotonic circuits, etc. However, all of the previous state-of-the-art works are restricted to only one or two dimensions of the light field, which cannot fulfill the increasing demand on complex light manipulation. Full-dimensional and dynamic control of the light field, including spatial amplitude, phase and polarization, is quite challenging and indispensable for the generation of sophisticated optical lattices. Here, we propose and demonstrate a reconfigurable integrated full-dimensional optical lattice generator, i.e. a photonic emitting array (PEA) enabling reconfigurable and full-dimensional manipulation of optical lattices, in which 4x4 photonic emitting units (PEUs) with 64 thermo-optic microheaters are densely integrated on a silicon chip. By engineering each PEU precisely with independent and complete control of optical properties of amplitude, phase and polarization, various optical vortex lattices, cylindrical vector beam lattices, and vector vortex beam lattices can be generated and reconfigured in the far field. The demonstrated integrated optical lattice generator paves the way for the miniaturization, full-dimensional control and enhanced flexibility of complex light manipulation.