arXiv subjects

Kaihang Lu

Publications and source records attributed to Kaihang Lu.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Towards Terabit/$\lambda$/s Multidimensional Silicon Photonic Engine

Increasing artificial intelligence (AI) workloads drive co-packaged optics (CPO), which integrates optical engines with electronic components. Optical interconnects can extend transmission distances and reduce latency, allowing distributed clusters in AI factories to operate as a unified computational unit. However, escalating data throughput necessitates greater parallelization of light within ultracompact form factors while maintaining stringent energy efficiency and latency constraints. Here, we present a multidimensional silicon photonic engine that achieves a communication capacity exceeding 1.8 terabit/s/lambda/s. By monolithically integrating transceivers, spatial and polarization (de)multiplexers, and optical signal processors on a single chip, we eliminate bulky discrete (de)multiplexers and power-hungry digital signal processing (DSP). In experiments, the photonic engine can be self-configured to identify two, four, or six concurrent spatial and polarization channels per fiber while mitigating dynamic channel crosstalk. Compared with the state-of-art DSP, our approach achieves >5,000-fold reductions in both power consumption and processing latency at a MIMO processing order of six. Furthermore, we demonstrate full-duplex, modulation-format-transparent inter-chip communication over 300-meter fiber. These results represent a paradigm shift for optical engines in future high-performance computing and AI-driven data centers.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2026

Self-Configuring Universal Multichannel and Multidimensional Integrated Photonic Processing Engine

Arbitrary manipulation of light across multiple physical dimensions is essential for harnessing its parallelism in fundamental research and advanced applications, such as optical interconnects, computing, imaging, sensing, and quantum networks. However, creating a universal device capable of arbitrary operations of multidimensional optical beams has been challenging, primarily due to their complex mutual interferences and dynamic transmission characteristics. In this study, we experimentally demonstrate a self-configuring integrated photonic processor designed for the arbitrary manipulations of multiple optical waves over their spatial and polarization dimensions. Despite the random nature of the input speckle, the photonic processor relies on an optical singular-value decomposition engine to sort all orthogonal input beams and implement arbitrary processing over both spatial and polarization dimensions precisely. Notably, the photonic processor can be self programmed in situ, enabling versatile functionalities such as beam shaping, optical switching, and reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexing. Our findings advance the manipulation of multidimensional optical beams through a scalable, CMOS-compatible integration approach, paving the way for fully exploiting the parallelism of light in various applications.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Experimental Demonstration of Efficient and Polarization-Diversity Fiber-Chip Coupling by 2D Grating Couplers with 193-nm DUV Lithography

Two-dimensional (2D) diffraction gratings offer a polarization-independent coupling solution between the planar photonic chips and optical fibers, with advantages including placement flexibility, ease of fabrication, and tolerance to alignment errors. In this work, we first proposed and experimentally demonstrated a highly efficient 2D grating coupler enabled by exciting multipolar resonances through bi-level dielectric structures. A 70-nm shallow-etched hole array and a 160-nm-thick deposited polycrystalline silicon tooth array are employed in our proposed 2D grating coupler. Strong optical field confinement and enhanced radiation directionality can thus be attained through the use of 193-nm deep-ultraviolet (DUV) lithography, which is readily accessible from commercial silicon photonics foundries. The measured experimental peak coupling efficiency is -2.54 dB with a minimum feature size of 180 nm. Our design exhibits a 3-dB bandwidth of around 23.4 nm with good positioning tolerance for optical fibers. Due to the benefits of perfectly vertical coupling, the measured polarization-dependent loss in our experiments is below 0.3 dB within the 3-dB working bandwidth. Our proposed 2D grating structure and design method can also be applied to other integrated optics platforms, enabling an efficient and polarization-diversity coupling between optical fibers and photonic chips while reducing requirements on feature size.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2024

Efficient and Adaptive Reconfiguration of Light Structure in Optical Fibers with Programmable Silicon Photonics

The demand for structured light with a reconfigurable spatial and polarization distribution has been increasing across a wide range of fundamental and advanced photonics applications, including microscopy, imaging, sensing, communications, and quantum information processing. Nevertheless, the unique challenge in manipulating light structure after optical fiber transmission is the necessity to dynamically address the inherent unknown fiber transmission matrix, which can be affected by factors like variations in the fiber stress and inter-modal coupling. In this study, we demonstrated that the beam structure at the fiber end including its spatial and polarization distribution can be precisely and adaptively reconfigured by a programmable silicon photonic processor, without prior knowledge of the optical fiber systems and their changes in the transmission matrices. Our demonstrated photonic chip can generate and control the full set of spatial and polarization modes or their superposition in a two-mode few-mode optical fiber. High-quality beam structures can be obtained in experiments. In addition, efficient generation is achieved by our proposed chip-to-fiber emitter while using a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor compatible fabrication technology. Our findings present a scalable pathway towards achieving a portable and reliable system capable of achieving precise control, efficient emission, and adaptive reconfiguration for structured light in optical fibers.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2023

Empowering high-dimensional optical fiber communications with integrated photonic processors

Mode division multiplexing (MDM) in optical fibers enables multichannel capabilities for various applications, including data transmission, quantum networks, imaging, and sensing. However, MDM optical fiber systems, usually necessities bulk-optics approaches for launching different orthogonal fiber modes into the multimode optical fiber, and multiple-input multiple-output digital electronic signal processing at the receiver side to undo the arbitrary mode scrambling in a circular-core optical fiber. Here we show that a high-dimensional optical fiber communication system can be entirely implemented by a reconfigurable integrated photonic processor, featuring kernels of multichannel mode multiplexing transmitter and all-optical descrambling receiver. High-speed and inter-chip communications involving six spatial- and polarization modes have been experimentally demonstrated with high efficiency and high-quality eye diagrams, despite the presence of random mode scrambling and polarization rotation in a circular-core few-mode fiber. The proposed photonic integration approach holds promising prospects for future space-division multiplexing applications.

physics.optics↗