Electrically-controlled suppression of Rayleigh backscattering in an integrated photonic circuit
Undesirable light scattering is a fundamental cause for photon loss in nanophotonics. Rayleigh backscattering can be particularly difficult to avoid in wave-guiding systems and arises from both material defects and geometric defects at the subwavelength scale. It has recently been shown that systems...
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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
De Gruyter
2024-01-01
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| Series: | Nanophotonics |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1515/nanoph-2023-0431 |
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| Summary: | Undesirable light scattering is a fundamental cause for photon loss in nanophotonics. Rayleigh backscattering can be particularly difficult to avoid in wave-guiding systems and arises from both material defects and geometric defects at the subwavelength scale. It has recently been shown that systems exhibiting chiral dispersion due to broken time-reversal symmetry (TRS) can naturally mitigate Rayleigh backscattering, yet this has never been explored in integrated photonics. Here we demonstrate the dynamic suppression of disorder-induced Rayleigh backscattering in integrated photonics even when defects are clearly present. Our experiments are performed using lithium niobate on insulator resonators in which TRS is broken through an electrically-driven acousto-optic interaction. We experimentally observe near-complete suppression of Rayleigh backscattering within the resonator by measuring the optical states and through direct measurements of the back-scattered light. We additionally provide a new and intuitive generalization argument that explains this suppression of backscattering as a form of topological protection in synthetic space. |
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| ISSN: | 2192-8606 2192-8614 |