arXiv subjects

Xuetao Gan

Publications and source records attributed to Xuetao Gan.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Electrically tunable second harmonic generation in atomically thin ReS2

Electrical tuning of second-order nonlinearity in optical materials is attractive to strengthen and expand the functionalities of nonlinear optical technologies, though its implementation remains elusive. Here, we report the electrically tunable second-order nonlinearity in atomically thin ReS2 flakes benefiting from their distorted 1T crystal structure and interlayer charge transfer. Enabled by the efficient electrostatic control of the few-atomic-layer ReS2, we show that second harmonic generation (SHG) can be induced in odd-number-layered ReS2 flakes which are centrosymmetric and thus without intrinsic SHG. Moreover, the SHG can be precisely modulated by the electric field, reversibly switching from almost zero to an amplitude more than one order of magnitude stronger than that of the monolayer MoS2. For the even-number-layered ReS2 flakes with the intrinsic SHG, the external electric field could be leveraged to enhance the SHG. We further perform the first-principles calculations which suggest that the modification of in-plane second-order hyperpolarizability by the redistributed interlayer-transferring charges in the distorted 1T crystal structure underlies the electrically tunable SHG in ReS2. With its active SHG tunability while using the facile electrostatic control, our work may further expand the nonlinear optoelectronic functions of two-dimensional materials for developing electrically controllable nonlinear optoelectronic devices.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2022

High-efficiency second-harmonic and sum-frequency generation in a silicon nitride microring integrated with few-layer GaSe

Silicon nitride (SiN) photonics platform has attributes of ultra-low linear and nonlinear propagation losses and CMOS-compatible fabrication process, promising large-scale multifunctional photonic circuits. However, the centrosymmetric nature of SiN inhibits second-order nonlinear optical responses in its photonics platform, which is desirable for developing efficient nonlinear active devices. Here, we demonstrate high-efficiency second-order nonlinear processes in SiN photonics platform by integrating a few-layer GaSe flake on a SiN microring resonator. With the pump of microwatts continuous-wave lasers, second-harmonic generation and sum-frequency generation with the conversion efficiencies of 849%/W and 123%/W, respectively, are achieved, which benefit from the ultrahigh second-order nonlinear susceptibility of GaSe, resonance enhanced GaSe-light interaction, and phase-matching condition satisfied by the mode engineering. Combining with the easy integration, the GaSe-assisted high-efficiency second-order nonlinear processes offer a new route to enriching already strong functionality of SiN photonics platform in nonlinear optics.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2021

Exciting Magnetic Dipole Mode of Split Ring Plasmonic Nano Resonator by Photonic Crystal Nanocavity

On chip exciting electric modes in individual plasmonic nanostructures are realized widely; nevertheless, the excitation of their magnetic counterparts is seldom reported. Here, we propose a highly efficient on chip excitation approach of the magnetic dipole mode of an individual split ring resonator (SRR) by integrating it onto a photonic crystal nanocavity (PCNC). A high excitation efficiency of up to 58% is realized through the resonant coupling between the modes of the SRR and PCNC. A further fine adjustment of the excited magnetic dipole mode is demonstrated by tuning the relative position and twist angle between the SRR and PCNC. Finally, a structure with a photonic crystal waveguide side coupled with the hybrid SRR PCNC is illustrated, which could excite the magnetic dipole mode with an in plane coupling geometry and potentially facilitate the future device application. Our result may open a way for developing chip integrated photonic devices employing a magnetic field component in the optical field.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2021

Fano resonance from a one-dimensional topological photonic crystal

An ultra-compact one-dimensional topological photonic crystal (1D-TPC) is designed in a single mode silicon bus-waveguide to generate Fano resonance lineshape. The Fano resonance comes from the interference between the discrete topological boundary state of the 1D-TPC and the continuum high-order leaky mode of the bus-waveguide. Standalone asymmetric Fano resonance lineshapes are obtained experimentally in the waveguide transmission spectrum with a maximum extinction ratio of 33 dB and a slope ratio of 10 dB/nm over a broadband flat background.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2021

Ultralow Threshold, Single-Mode InGaAs/GaAs Multi-Quantum Disk Nanowire Lasers

We present single-mode nanowire (NW) lasers with ultralow threshold in the near-infrared spectral range. To ensure the single-mode operation, the NW diameter and length are reduced specifically to minimize the longitudinal and transverse modes of the NW cavity. Increased optical losses and reduced gain volume by the dimension reduction are compensated by excellent NW morphology and InGaAs/GaAs multi-quantum disks. At 5 K, a threshold low as 1.6 μJ/cm2 per pulse is achieved with a resulting quality factor exceeding 6400. By further passivating the NW with an AlGaAs shell to suppress surface non-radiative recombination, single-mode lasing operation is obtained with a threshold of only 48 μJ/cm2 per pulse at room temperature with a high characteristic temperature of 223 K and power output of ~ 0.9 μW. These single-mode, ultralow threshold, high power output NW lasers are promising for the development of near-infrared nanoscale coherent light sources for integrated photonic circuits, sensing, and spectroscopy.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2021

Giant Enhancement of Nonlinear Harmonic Generation in a Silicon Topological Photonic Crystal Nanocavity Chain

Strongly enhanced third-harmonic generation (THG) by the topological localization of an edge mode in a Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) chain of silicon photonic crystal nanocavities is demonstrated. The edge mode of the nanocavity chain not only naturally inherits resonant properties of the single nanocavity, but also exhibits the topological feature with mode robustness extending well beyond individual nanocavity. By engineering the SSH nanocavities with alternating strong and weak coupling strengths on a silicon slab, we observe the edge mode formation that entails a THG signal with three orders of magnitude enhancement compared with that in a trivial SSH structure. Our results indicate that the photonic crystal nanocavity chain could provide a promising on-chip platform for topology-driven nonlinear photonics.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2021

A topological photonic ring-resonator for on-chip channel filters

A topologically protected ring-resonator formed in valley photonic crystals is proposed and fabricated on a silicon slab. The unidirectional transmission and robustness against structure defects of its resonant modes are illustrated. Coupled with topological waveguides, the topological ring is functioned as notch and channel-drop filters. The work opens up a new avenue for developing advanced chip-integrated photonic circuits with attributes of topological photonics.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2019

Optically active beams: non-reciprocal optical activity in free space induced by spin-orbital interaction of light

Optical activity, the power of a medium to rotate the polarization of a light beam, has contributed significantly to molecular structure assessments in stereochemistry, biomolecular science and crystallography. Thus far, it is commonly believed that optical activity is manifested only in the chiral media which can give rise to circular birefringence of light. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that free space can also support the implementation of non-reciprocal optical activity with Bessel beams by spin-orbital interaction. Specifically, non-diffractive optically active beams are realized, with their optical rotatory power readily controlled by simple optical elements. We show that such free-space optical activity can be exploited to form non-reciprocal optical components such as polarization rotators, isolators, and circulators. Our results may bring about new possibilities of media-independent optical activity to other transverse waves ranging from radio to optical frequencies.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2019

Fano resonance lineshapes in a waveguide-microring structure enabled by an air-hole

We propose and demonstrate, by simply inserting an air-hole in the waveguide side-coupling with a microring resonator (MRR), the transmission spectrum presents Fano lineshapes at all of the resonant modes. Measured from the fabricated devices, Fano lineshapes with slope rates over 400 dB/nm and extinction ratios over 20 dB are obtained. We ascribe it to the air-hole-induced phase-shift between the discrete resonant modes of the MRR and the continuum propagating mode of the bus-waveguide, which modifies their interference lineshapes from symmetric Lorentzian to asymmetric Fano. From devices with varied locations and diameters of the air-hole, different Fano asymmetric parameters are extracted, verifying the air-hole-induced phase-shifts. This air-hole-assisted waveguide-MRR structure for achieving Fano resonance lineshapes has advantages of simple design, compact footprint, large tolerance of fabrication errors, as well as broadband operation range. It has great potentials to expand and improve performances of on-chip MRR-based devices, including sensors, switchings and filters.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2019

Second harmonic and sum-frequency generations from a silicon metasurface integrated with a two-dimensional material

Silicon-based nonlinear metasurfaces were implemented only with third-order nonlinearity due to the crystal centrosymmetry and the efficiencies are considerably low, which hinders their practical applications with low-power lasers. Here, we propose to integrate a two-dimensional GaSe flake onto a silicon metasurface to assist high-efficiency second-order nonlinear processes, including second-harmonic generation (SHG) and sum-frequency generation (SFG). By resonantly pumping the integrated GaSe-metasurface, which supports a Fano resonance, the obtained SHG is about two orders of magnitude stronger than the third-harmonic generation from the bare silicon metasurface. In addition, thanks to the resonant field enhancement and GaSe's strong second-order nonlinearity, SHG of the integrated structure could be excited successfully with a low-power continuous-wave laser, which makes it possible to further implement SFG. The high-efficiency second-order nonlinear processes assisted by two-dimensional materials present potentials to expand silicon metasurface's functionalities in nonlinear regime.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2019

A compact structure for realizing Lorentzian, Fano and EIT resonance lineshapes in a microring resonator

Microring resonators, as a fundamental building block of photonic integrated circuits, have been well developed into numerous functional devices, whose performances are strongly determined by microring's resonance lineshapes. We propose a compact structure to reliably realize Lorentzian, Fano, and electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) resonance lineshapes in a microring. By simply inserting two air-holes in the side-coupled waveguide of a microring, a Fabry-Perot (FP) resonance is involved to couple with microring's resonant modes, showing Lorentzian, Fano, and EIT lineshapes over one free spectral range of the FP resonance. The quality factors, extinction ratios, and slope rates in different lineshapes are discussed. At microring's specific resonant wavelength, the lineshape could be tuned among these three types by controlling the FP cavity's length. Experiment results verify the theoretical analysis well and represent Fano lineshapes with extinction ratios of about 20 dB and slope rates over 280 dB/nm. The reliably and flexibly tunable lineshapes in the compact structure have potentials to improve microring-based devices and expand their application scopes.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2018

Low-power continuous-wave second harmonic generation in semiconductor nanowires

Semiconductor nanowires (NWs) are promising for realizing various on-chip nonlinear optical devices, due to their nanoscale lateral confinement and strong light-matter interaction. However, high-intensity pulsed pump lasers are typically needed to exploit their optical nonlinearity because light couples poorly with nanometric-size wires. Here, we demonstrate microwatts continuous-wave light pumped second harmonic generation (SHG) in AlGaAs NWs by integrating them with silicon planar photonic crystal cavities. Light-NW coupling is enhanced effectively by the extremely localized cavity mode at the subwavelength scale. Strong SHG is obtained even with a continuous-wave laser excitation with a pump power down to ~3 uW, and the cavity-enhancement factor is estimated around 150. Additionally, in the integrated device, the NW's SHG is more than two-order of magnitude stronger than third harmonic generations in the silicon slab, though the NW only couple s with less than 1% of the cavity mode. This significantly reduced power-requirement of NW's nonlinear frequency conversion would promote NW-based building blocks for nonlinear optics, specially in chip-integrated coherent light sources, entangled photon-pairs and signal processing devices.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2018

Multiple optical frequency-conversions in few-layer GaSe assisted by a photonic crystal cavity

While two-dimensional (2D) materials have intriguing second-order nonlinearities with ultrahigh coefficient and electrical tunability, their atomic layer thicknesses hinder explorations of other optical frequency-conversions (OFCs) than second harmonic generation (SHG) due to inefficient light-coupling and unachievable phase-matching. We report, by resonantly pumping a photonic crystal cavity integrated with a few-layer GaSe, it is possible to realize multiple second-order nonlinear processes in GaSe even with microwatts continuous wave pumps, including SHGs, sum-frequency generations (SFGs), cascaded SFGs and their induced third harmonic generations. These OFCs arise from the significant cavity-enhancements. The enhancement factor of a SHG process is estimated exceeding 1,300. The cascaded SFGs have comparably strong intensities with those of SHGs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first observation of cascaded second-order nonlinear processes in 2D materials. The cavity-assisted OFCs could provide a view to study deterministic OFCs in 2D materials with low pump power and expand their optoelectronic applications to nonlinear regime.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2018

Extraordinary second harmonic generation in ReS2 atomic crystals

We report the observations of unexpected layer-dependent, strong, and anisotropic second harmonic generations (SHGs) in atomically thin ReS2. Appreciable (negligible) SHGs are obtained from even (odd) numbers of ReS2 layers, which is opposite to the layer-dependence of SHGs in group VI transition metal dichalcogenides, such as MoS2 and WS2. The results are analyzed from ReS2's crystal structure, implying second harmonic polarizations generated from the interlayer coupling. Pumped by a telecomband laser, SHG from the bilayer ReS2 is almost one order of magnitude larger than that from the monolayer WS2. The estimated second-order nonlinear susceptibility of 900 pm/V is remarkably high among those reported in two-dimensional materials. The laser polarization dependence of ReS2's SHG is strongly anisotropic and indicates its distorted lattice structure with more unequal and non-zero second-order susceptibility elements.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2018

Second harmonic generation in atomically thin MoTe2

We have studied on optical second harmonic generations (SHGs) from atomically thin MoTe2 flakes with 2H and 1T' phases. From 2H-MoTe2 samples with odd (even) numbers of layers, strong (negligible) SHGs are observed due to the layer-dependent broken inversion symmetry. When pumped by a telecom-band laser, SHG from a monolayer 2H-MoTe2 is about one order of magnitude stronger than that from a monolayer WS2; an extremely high second-order nonlinear susceptibility of 2.5 nm/V is estimated, presenting the highest value among those reported in two-dimensional materials. SHG measurements in MoTe2 are also demonstrated as an efficient way to distinguish the 2H-to-1T' phase transition. Comparing to the SHG in 2H-MoTe2, 1T'-MoTe2's SHG has much lower efficiency and the polarization dependence is changed from six-fold to two-lobe pattern.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2017

Cylindrical vector resonant modes achieved in planar photonic crystal cavities with enlarged air-holes

We reveal a triangular-lattice planar photonic crystal supports Bloch modes with radially and azimuthally symmetric electric field distributions at the top band-edge of the first photonic band. Bifurcated from the corresponding Bloch modes, two cylindrical vector resonant modes are achieved by simply enlarging the central air-hole of the planar photonic crystal, which have high quality factors around 3,000 and small mode volume. The far-field radiations of the two resonant modes present high-quality cylindrical vector beam profiles. The resonant modes could be optimized by modifying the six nearest neighboring air-holes around the central defect. The cylindrically symmetric characteristics of the resonant mode's near- and far-fields might provide a new view to investigate light-matter interactions and device developments in planar photonic crystal cavities.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2017

Microwatts continuous-wave pumped second harmonic generation in few- and mono-layer GaSe

We demonstrate the first achievement of continuous-wave (CW) pumped second harmonic generation (SHG) in few- and mono-layer gallium selenide (GaSe) flakes, which are coated on silicon photonic crystal (PC) cavities. Because of ultrahigh second order nonlinearity of the two-dimensional (2D) GaSe and localized resonant mode in the PC cavity, SHG's pump power is greatly reduced to microwatts. In a nine-layer GaSe coated PC cavity, while the optical power inside the GaSe flake is only 1.5 percent of that in the silicon PC slab, the SHG in GaSe is more than 650 times stronger than the third harmonic generation in silicon slab, indicating 2D GaSe's great potentials to strengthen nonlinear processes in silicon photonics. Our study opens up a new view to expand 2D materials' optoelectronic applications in nonlinear regime and chip-integrated active devices.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2017

High performance graphene oxide-based humidity sensor integrated on a photonic crystal cavity

We report a high performance relative humidity (RH) microsensor by coating a few-layer graphene oxide (GO) flake over a photonic crystal (PC) cavity. Since the GO layer has a high water-activity and interacts with the evanescent cavity mode strongly, the exposure of GO-PC cavity in varied humidity levels results in significant resonant wavelength shifts, showing a slope of 0.68 nm/%RH in the range of 60%-85% RH. By interrogating the power variation of the cavity reflection, the microsensor presents an ultrahigh sensitivity exceeding 3.9 dB/%RH. Relying on the unimpeded permeation of water molecules through the GO interlayers and microscale distribution of the cavity mode, the integrated sensor has a response time less than 100 ms, which promises successful measurements of human breathing. Combining with the ease of fabrication, this high performance RH sensor has potential applications requiring optical access, device compactness, and fast dynamic response.

physics.optics↗