arXiv subjects

Zhigang Chen

Publications and source records attributed to Zhigang Chen.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

Topological phenomena demonstrated in photorefractive photonic lattices

Topological photonics has attracted widespread research attention in the past decade due to its fundamental interest and unique manner in controlling light propagation for advanced applications. Paradigmatic approaches have been proposed to achieve topological phases including topological insulators in a variety of photonic systems. In particular, photonic lattices composed of evanescently coupled waveguide arrays have been employed conveniently to explore and investigate topological physics. In this article, we review our recent work on demonstration of topological phenomena in reconfigurable photonic lattices established by site-to-site cw-laser-writing or multiple-beam optical induction in photorefractive nonlinear crystals. We focus on the study of topological states realized in the celebrated one-dimensional Su-Schrieffer-Heeger lattices, including nonlinear topological edge states and gap solitons, nonlinearity-induced coupling to topological edge states, and nonlinear control of non-Hermitian topological states. In the two-dimensional case, we discuss two typical examples: universal mapping of momentum-space topological singularities through Dirac-like photonic lattices and realization of real-space nontrivial loop states in flatband photonic lattices. Our work illustrates how photorefractive materials can be employed conveniently to build up various synthetic photonic microstructures for topological studies, which may prove relevant and inspiring for exploration of fundamental phenomena in topological systems beyond photonics.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2021

Free-space Realization of Tunable Pin-like Optical Vortex Beams

We demonstrate, both analytically and experimentally, free-space pin-like optical vortex beams (POVBs).Such angular-momentum-carrying beams feature tunable peak intensity and undergo robust anti-diffracting propagation, realized by judiciously modulating both the amplitude and the phase profile of a standard laser beam. Specifically, they are generated by superimposing a radially-symmetric power-law phase on a helical phase structure, which allows the inclusion of an orbital angular momentum term to the POVBs. During propagation in free-space, these POVBs initially exhibit autofocusing dynamics, and subsequently, their amplitude patterns morph into a high-order Bessel-like profile characterized by a hollow-core and an annular main-lobe with a constant or tunable width during propagation. In contrast with numerous previous endeavors on Bessel beams, our work represents the first demonstration of long-distance free-space generation of optical vortex 'pins', with their peak intensity evolution controlled by the impressed amplitude structure. Both the Poynting vectors and the optical radiation forces associated with these beams are also numerically analyzed, revealing novel properties that may be useful for a wide range of applications.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2021

Dynamically Emerging Topological Phase Transitions in Nonlinear Interacting Soliton Lattices

We demonstrate dynamical topological phase transitions in evolving Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) lattices made of interacting soliton arrays, which are entirely driven by nonlinearity and thereby exemplify emergent nonlinear topological phenomena. The phase transitions occur from topologically trivial-to-nontrivial phase in periodic succession with crossovers from topologically nontrivial-to-trivial regime. The signature of phase transition is gap-closing and re-opening point, where two extended states are pulled from the bands into the gap to become localized topological edge states. Crossovers occur via decoupling of the edge states from the bulk of the lattice.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2020

FewJoint: A Few-shot Learning Benchmark for Joint Language Understanding

Few-shot learning (FSL) is one of the key future steps in machine learning and has raised a lot of attention. However, in contrast to the rapid development in other domains, such as Computer Vision, the progress of FSL in Nature Language Processing (NLP) is much slower. One of the key reasons for this is the lacking of public benchmarks. NLP FSL researches always report new results on their own constructed few-shot datasets, which is pretty inefficient in results comparison and thus impedes cumulative progress. In this paper, we present FewJoint, a novel Few-Shot Learning benchmark for NLP. Different from most NLP FSL research that only focus on simple N-classification problems, our benchmark introduces few-shot joint dialogue language understanding, which additionally covers the structure prediction and multi-task reliance problems. This allows our benchmark to reflect the real-word NLP complexity beyond simple N-classification. Our benchmark is used in the few-shot learning contest of SMP2020-ECDT task-1. We also provide a compatible FSL platform to ease experiment set-up.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2020

Valley-dependent wavepacket self-rotation and Zitterbewegung in symmetry-broken honeycomb lattices

The toolbox quantities used for manipulating the flow of light include typically amplitude, phase, and polarization. Pseudospins, such as those arising from valley degrees of freedom in photonic structures, have recently emerged as an excellent candidate for this toolbox, in parallel with rapid development of spintronics and valleytronics in condensed-matter physics. Here, by employing symmetry-broken honeycomb photonic lattices, we demonstrate valley-dependent wavepacket self-rotation manifested in spiraling intensity patterns, which occurs without any initial orbital angular momentum. Theoretically, we show that such wavepacket self-rotation is induced by the Berry phase and results in Zitterbewegung oscillations. The "center-of-mass" of the wavepacket oscillates at a gap-dependent frequency, while the helicity of self-rotation is valley-dependent, that is, correlated with the Berry curvature. Our results lead to new understanding of the venerable Zitterbewegung phenomenon from the perspective of topology and are readily applicable on other platforms such as two-dimensional Dirac materials and ultracold atoms.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2020

Weakly nonlinear topological gap solitons in Su-Schrieffer-Heeger photonic lattices

We study both theoretically and experimentally the effect of nonlinearity on topologically protected linear interface modes in a photonic Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) lattice. It is shown that under either focusing or defocusing nonlinearity, this linear topological mode of the SSH lattice turns into a family of topological gap solitons. These solitons are stable. However, they exhibit only a low amplitude and power and are thus weakly nonlinear, even when the bandgap of the SSH lattice is wide. As a consequence, if the initial beam has modest or high power, it will either delocalize, or evolve into a soliton not belonging to the family of topological gap solitons. These theoretical predictions are observed in our experiments with optically induced SSH-type photorefractive lattices.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2020

Nonlinear control of PT-symmetry and non-Hermitian topological states

Advances in topological photonics and non-Hermitian optics have drastically changed our perception on how interdisciplinary concepts may empower unprecedented applications. Bridging the two areas could uncover the reciprocity between topology and non-Hermiticity in complex systems. So far, such endeavors have focused mainly on linear-optics regime. Here, we establish a nonlinear non-Hermitian topological platform for control of parity-time (PT) symmetry and topological edge states. Experimentally, we demonstrate that optical nonlinearity effectively modulates the gain and loss of a topological interface waveguide in a non-Hermitian Su-Schrieffer-Heeger lattice, leading to switching between PT and non-PT-symmetric regimes accompanied by destruction and restoration of topological zero modes. Theoretically, we examine the fundamental issue of the interplay between two antagonistic effects: the sensitivity close to exceptional points and the robustness of non-Hermitian topological modes. Realizing single-channel control of global PT-symmetry via local nonlinearity may herald new possibilities for light manipulation and unconventional device applications.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2020

Nonlinear Topological Valley Hall Edge States Arising from Type-II Dirac Cones

Type-II Dirac/Weyl points, although impermissible in particle physics due to Lorentz covariance, were uncovered in condensed matter physics, driven by fundamental interest and intriguing applications of topological materials. Recently, there has been a surge of exploration of such generic points using various engineered platforms including photonic crystals, waveguide arrays, metasurfaces, magnetized plasma and polariton micropillars, aiming towards relativistic quantum emulation and understanding of exotic topological phenomena. Such endeavors, however, have focused mainly on linear topological states in real or synthetic Dirac/Weyl materials. Here, we demonstrate nonlinear valley Hall edge states (VHESs) in laser-writing anisotropic photonic lattices hosting type-II Dirac points. These self-trapped VHESs, manifested as topological gap quasi-solitons, are fundamentally distinct from their linear counterparts in type-I lattices and from all previously found topological solitons. Our finding may provide a route for understanding nonlinear phenomena in Lorentz-violating topological systems and for developing advanced light sources from topological insulator lasers.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2020

Filtering before Iteratively Referring for Knowledge-Grounded Response Selection in Retrieval-Based Chatbots

The challenges of building knowledge-grounded retrieval-based chatbots lie in how to ground a conversation on its background knowledge and how to match response candidates with both context and knowledge simultaneously. This paper proposes a method named Filtering before Iteratively REferring (FIRE) for this task. In this method, a context filter and a knowledge filter are first built, which derive knowledge-aware context representations and context-aware knowledge representations respectively by global and bidirectional attention. Besides, the entries irrelevant to the conversation are discarded by the knowledge filter. After that, iteratively referring is performed between context and response representations as well as between knowledge and response representations, in order to collect deep matching features for scoring response candidates. Experimental results show that FIRE outperforms previous methods by margins larger than 2.8% and 4.1% on the PERSONA-CHAT dataset with original and revised personas respectively, and margins larger than 3.1% on the CMU_DoG dataset in terms of top-1 accuracy. We also show that FIRE is more interpretable by visualizing the knowledge grounding process.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2020

Nontrivial coupling of light into a defect: the interplay of nonlinearity and topology

The flourishing of topological photonics in the last decade was achieved mainly due to developments in linear topological photonic structures. However, when nonlinearity is introduced, many intriguing questions arise. For example, are there universal fingerprints of underlying topology when modes are coupled by nonlinearity, and what can happen to topological invariants during nonlinear propagation? To explore these questions, here we experimentally demonstrate nonlinearity-induced coupling to topologically protected edge states using a photonic platform, and theoretically develop a general framework for interpreting the mode-coupling dynamics in nonlinear topological systems. Performed in laser-written photonic Su-Schrieffer-Heeger lattices, our experiments reveal nonlinear coupling of light into a nontrivial edge or interface defect channel otherwise not permissible due to topological protection. Our theory explains well all the observations. Furthermore, we introduce the concepts of inherited and emergent nonlinear topological phenomena, and a protocol capable of unveiling the interplay of nonlinearity and topology. These concepts are applicable for other nonlinear topological systems, either in higher dimensions or beyond our photonic platform.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2020

Tunable self-similar Bessel-like beams of arbitrary order

We predict that Bessel-like beams of arbitrary integer order can exhibit a tunable self-similar behavior (that take an invariant form under suitable stretching transformations). Specifically, by engineering the amplitude and the phase on the input plane in real space, we show that it is possible to generate higher-order vortex Bessel-like beams with fully controllable radius of the hollow core and maximum intensity during propagation. In addition, using a similar approach, we show that it is also possible to generate zeroth order Bessel-like beams with controllable beam width and maximum intensity. Our numerical results are in excellent agreement with our theoretical predictions.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2019

Topological Valley Hall Edge State Lasing

Topological lasers based on topologically protected edge states offer unique features and enhanced robustness of operation in comparison with conventional lasers, even in the presence of disorder, edge deformation, and localized defects. Here we propose a new class of topological lasers arising from the valley Hall edge states, which does not require external magnetic fields or dynamical modulations of the device parameters. Specifically, topological lasing occurs at domain walls between two honeycomb waveguide arrays with broken spatial inversion symmetry. Two types of valley Hall edge lasing modes are found by shaping the gain landscape along the domain walls. In the presence of uniform losses and two-photon absorption, lasing in edge states results in the formation of stable nonlinear dissipative excitations localized on the edge of the structure, even if it has complex geometry and even if it is finite. Robustness of lasing states is demonstrated in both periodic and finite structures, where such states can circumvent sharp corners without scattering loss or radiation into the bulk. The photonic structure and mechanism proposed here for topological lasing is fundamentally different from those previously demonstrated topological lasers and can be used for fabrication of practical topological lasers of various geometries.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2019

Flatband Line States in Photonic Super-Honeycomb Lattices

We establish experimentally a photonic super-honeycomb lattice (sHCL) by use of a cw-laser writing technique, and thereby demonstrate two distinct flatband line states that manifest as noncontractible-loop-states in an infinite flatband lattice. These localized states (straight and zigzag lines) observed in the sHCL with tailored boundaries cannot be obtained by superposition of conventional compact localized states because they represent a new topological entity in flatband systems. In fact, the zigzag-line states, unique to the sHCL, are in contradistinction with those previously observed in the Kagome and Lieb lattices. Their momentum-space spectrum emerges in the high-order Brillouin zone where the flat band touches the dispersive bands, revealing the characteristic of topologically protected bandcrossing. Our experimental results are corroborated by numerical simulations based on the coupled mode theory. This work may provide insight to Dirac like 2D materials beyond graphene.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2019

Observation of quincunx-shaped and dipole-like flatband states in photonic rhombic lattices without band-touching

We demonstrate experimentally the existence of compact localized states (CLSs) in a quasi-one-dimensional photonic rhombic lattice in presence of two distinct refractive-index gradients (i.e., a driven lattice ribbon) acting as external direct current (dc) electric fields. Such a lattice is composed of an array of periodically arranged evanescently coupled waveguides, which hosts a perfect flatband that touches both remaining dispersive bands when it is not driven. The external driving is realized by modulating the relative writing beam intensity of adjacent waveguides. We find that a y-gradient set perpendicularly to the ribbon preserves the flatband while removing the band-touching. The undriven CLS - which occupies two lattices sites over one unit cell - turns into a quincunx-shaped CLS spanned over two unit cells. Instead, an x-gradient acting parallel to the ribbon yields a Stark ladder of CLS whose spatial profile is unchanged with respect to the undriven case. We notably find that their superposition leads to Bloch-like oscillations in momentum space.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2019

Optical Spatial Shock Waves in Nonlocal Nonlinear Media

Dispersive shock waves are fascinating phenomena occurring when nonlinearity overwhelms linear effects, such as dispersion and diffraction. Many features of shock waves are still under investigation, as the interplay with noninstantaneity in temporal pulses transmission and nonlocality in spatial beams propagation. Despite the rich and vast literature on nonlinear waves in optical Kerr media, spatial dispersive shock waves in nonlocal materials deserve further attention for their unconventional properties. Indeed, they have been investigated in colloidal matter, chemical physics and biophotonics, for sensing and control of extreme phenomena. Here we review the last developed theoretical models and recent optical experiments on spatial dispersive shock waves in nonlocal media. Moreover, we discuss observations in novel versatile materials relevant for soft matter and biology.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2019

The First Evaluation of Chinese Human-Computer Dialogue Technology

In this paper, we introduce the first evaluation of Chinese human-computer dialogue technology. We detail the evaluation scheme, tasks, metrics and how to collect and annotate the data for training, developing and test. The evaluation includes two tasks, namely user intent classification and online testing of task-oriented dialogue. To consider the different sources of the data for training and developing, the first task can also be divided into two sub tasks. Both the two tasks are coming from the real problems when using the applications developed by industry. The evaluation data is provided by the iFLYTEK Corporation. Meanwhile, in this paper, we publish the evaluation results to present the current performance of the participants in the two tasks of Chinese human-computer dialogue technology. Moreover, we analyze the existing problems of human-computer dialogue as well as the evaluation scheme itself.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2019

Realization of robust boundary modes and non-contractible loop states in photonic Kagome lattices

Corbino-geometry has well-known applications in physics, as in the design of graphene heterostructures for detecting fractional quantum Hall states or superconducting waveguides for illustrating circuit quantum electrodynamics. Here, we propose and demonstrate a photonic Kagome lattice in the Corbino-geometry that leads to direct observation of non-contractible loop states protected by real-space topology. Such states represent the "missing" flat-band eigenmodes, manifested as one-dimensional loops winding around a torus, or lines infinitely extending to the entire flat-band lattice. In finite (truncated) Kagome lattices, however, line states cannot preserve as they are no longer the eigenmodes, in sharp contrast to the case of Lieb lattices. Using a continuous-wave laser writing technique, we experimentally establish finite Kagome lattices with desired cutting edges, as well as in the Corbino-geometry to eliminate edge effects. We thereby observe, for the first time to our knowledge, the robust boundary modes exhibiting self-healing properties, and the localized modes along toroidal direction as a direct manifestation of the non-contractible loop states.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2019

Anisotropic Optical Shock Waves in Isotropic Media with Giant Nonlocal Nonlinearity

Dispersive shock waves in thermal optical media belong to the third-order nonlinear phenomena, whose intrinsic irreversibility is described by time asymmetric quantum mechanics. Recent studies demonstrated that nonlocal wave breaking evolves in an exponentially decaying dynamics ruled by the reversed harmonic oscillator, namely, the simplest irreversible quantum system in the rigged Hilbert spaces. The generalization of this theory to more complex scenarios is still an open question. In this work, we use a thermal third-order medium with an unprecedented giant Kerr coefficient, the M-Cresol/Nylon mixed solution, to access an extremely-nonlinear highly-nonlocal regime and realize anisotropic shock waves. We prove that a superposition of the Gamow vectors in an ad hoc rigged Hilbert space describes the nonlinear beam propagation beyond the shock point. Specifically, the resulting rigged Hilbert space is a tensorial product between the reversed and the standard harmonic oscillators spaces. The anisotropy turns out from the interaction of trapping and antitrapping potentials in perpendicular directions. Our work opens the way to a complete description of novel intriguing shock phenomena, and those mediated by extreme nonlinearities.

physics.optics↗