Compact Optical Add-Drop De-Multiplexers with Cascaded Micro-Ring Resonators on SOI

A four-channel integrated optical wavelength de-multiplexer is experimentally illustrated on a silicon-on-insulator （SO1） substrate. With the aid of cascaded micro-ring resonators, the whole performance of the wavelength de- multiplexer is improved, such as 3 dB bandwidth and channel crosstalk. Based on the transform matrix theory, a four-channel wavelength de-multiplexer with average channel spacing 4.5±0.5 nm （3 dB bandwidth - 2 ± 0.5 nm） is demonstrated at telecommunication bands. For each channel, the extinction at the adjacent channel is below -39dB and the out-of-band rejection ratio is up to 40dB. The channel dropping loss is below 5dB in the five FSR spectral response periods （near 100 nm）.

Blue-detuned optical atom trapping in a compact plasmonic structure

We theoretically propose blue-detuned optical trapping for neutral atoms via strong near-field interfacing in a plasmonic nanohole array. The optical field at resonance forms a nanoscale-trap potential with an FWHM of 200 nm and about ～370 nm away from the nanohole; thus, a stable 3 D atom trapping independent of the surface potential is demonstrated. The effective trap depth is more than 1 m K when the optical power of trapping light is only about 0.5 m W, while the atom scattering rate is merely about 3.31 s^(-1), and the trap lifetime is about 800 s.This compact plasmonic structure provides high uniformity of trap depths and a two-layer array of atom nanotraps, which should have important applications in the manipulation of cold atoms and collective resonance fluorescence.

Optical true time-delay for two-dimensional phased array antennas using compact fiber grating prism

A two-dimensional(2D) optical true-time delay(TTD) beam-forming system using a compact fiber grating prism(FGP) for a planar phased array antenna(PAA) is proposed. The optical beam-forming system mainly consists of a TTD unit based on the same compact FGP, one tunable laser for elevation beam steering, and a controlled wavelength converter for azimuth beam steering. A planar PAA using such 2D optical TTD unit has advantages such as compactness, low bandwidth requirement for tunable laser sources, and potential for large-scale system implementations. The proof-of-concept experiment results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed scheme.