Tunable on-chip mode converter enabled by inverse design
Zhou Hongyin,
Liao Kun,
Su Zhaoxian,
Li Tianhao,
Geng Guangzhou,
Li Junjie,
Wang Yongtian,
Hu Xiaoyong,
Huang Lingling
Affiliations
Zhou Hongyin
Beijing Engineering Research Center of Mixed Reality and Advanced Display, School of Optics and Photonics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing100081, China
Liao Kun
State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics & Department of Physics, Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences, Nano-optoelectronics Frontier Center of Ministry of Education, Peking University, Beijing100871, China
Su Zhaoxian
Beijing Engineering Research Center of Mixed Reality and Advanced Display, School of Optics and Photonics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing100081, China
Li Tianhao
Beijing Engineering Research Center of Mixed Reality and Advanced Display, School of Optics and Photonics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing100081, China
Geng Guangzhou
Institute of Physics, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing100191,China
Li Junjie
Institute of Physics, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing100191,China
Wang Yongtian
Beijing Engineering Research Center of Mixed Reality and Advanced Display, School of Optics and Photonics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing100081, China
Hu Xiaoyong
State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics & Department of Physics, Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences, Nano-optoelectronics Frontier Center of Ministry of Education, Peking University, Beijing100871, China
Huang Lingling
Beijing Engineering Research Center of Mixed Reality and Advanced Display, School of Optics and Photonics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing100081, China
Tunable mode converter is a key component of channel switching and routing for optical communication system by adopting mode-division multiplexing. Traditional mode converter hardly implements high-order mode conversion and dynamic tunability simultaneously. In this study, we design a tunable mode converter filled with liquid crystal, which can convert fundamental mode into multiple high-order modes (TE0, TE1, and TE2) with a good performance and low intrinsic loss. For this multiple-objective task, we propose an inverse design framework based on the adjoint method. To experimentally prove our design, a tunable mode converter filled with air or water and a mode demultiplexer are fabricated to implement dynamic routing. The experimental results agree well with the simulation and reveal the crosstalk only around −7 dB. With its performance and efficiency, our proposed design flow can be a powerful tool for multifunction device design.
