arXiv subjects

Ziwen Zhou

Publications and source records attributed to Ziwen Zhou.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A unified resource-pool architecture for high-dimensional direct-detection optical communication

Increasing optical communication capacity without proportionally increasing receiver complexity remains a key challenge for direct-detection links. Conventional systems typically assign wavelength, polarization and intensity to fixed, separately recovered functions, so that alphabet expansion is accompanied by additional demultiplexing, polarization handling, receiver branches and electronic processing. Here we introduce a unified resource-pool architecture for high-dimensional direct-detection optical communication, in which wavelength, polarization and intensity are jointly organized as a composite optical symbol space and recovered through optical-domain joint projection rather than dimension-by-dimension separation. The receiver is implemented with an integrated disordered photonic processor that transforms each composite optical state into a reproducible multi-output electrical fingerprint for single-shot direct recovery. In a dual-wavelength transmission experiment, the system resolves 4096 composite symbols, corresponding to 12 bits per symbol slot, with a bit error rate of 4.25e-4 after 10 km standard-fiber transmission. Additional experiments demonstrate dense polarization alphabets, wavelength-indexed state-space expansion and high-launch-power operation over hollow-core fiber. These results establish disorder-enabled joint projection in an integrated photonic processor as a route to hardware-efficient high-dimensional direct-detection communication beyond conventional dimension-partitioned receiver architecture.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2026

First Thin-Film Lithium Tantalate Polarization Controller Enabling Reset-Free Mrad/s Tracking for Optical Interconnects

The rapid escalation of computing power driven by large-scale artificial intelligence is placing unprecedented demands on the bandwidth, latency, and energy efficiency of data-center interconnects (DCIs). Self-homodyne coherent (SHC) transmission is a promising architecture because it preserves the spectral efficiency of coherent detection while greatly simplifying digital signal processing, but its practical deployment is critically limited by random and often ultrafast state-of-polarization (SOP) fluctuations that induce carrier fading and destabilize coherent reception. Here we report the first integrated polarization controller based on thin-film lithium tantalate (TFLT), enabling reset-free polarization tracking at Mrad/s speeds. The four-stage electro-optic device exhibits polarization-dependent loss (PDL) below 0.3 dB, a half-wave voltage below 2.5 V, high modulation bandwidth, and negligible DC drift. To accommodate the finite tuning range of integrated phase shifters, we develop a finite-boundary gradient-descent (FBGD) control algorithm that ensures reset-free SOP evolution with no phase jump. The implemented adaptive polarization controller (APC) is validated through both standalone polarization-tracking measurements and a dual-polarization 16-QAM SHC 400-Gbps transmission system. Transient polarization disturbances can be tracked at speeds up to 2 Mrad/s, while stable reset-free operation under continuous polarization disturbances is maintained up to 1 Mrad/s. This reset-free performance represents more than doubling the state of the art, while the pre-FEC bit-error rates remain below the HD-FEC threshold under realistic DCI conditions and lightning-scale polarization disturbances. These results establish TFLT as a new platform for ultrafast, low-power, reset-free, and drift-free polarization control in coherent optical interconnects and beyond.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Robust and Hyper-Efficient Multi-dimensional Optical Fiber Semantic Communication

The growing demands of artificial intelligence and immersive media require communication beyond bit-level accuracy to meaning awareness. Conventional optical systems that focused on syntactic precision suffer significant inefficiencies. Here, we introduce a multi-dimensional semantic communication framework that bridges this gap by directly mapping high-level semantic features onto the orthogonal physical dimensions of light, frequency, polarization, and intensity, within a multimode fiber. This synergistic co-design of semantic logic and the photonic channel achieve an unprecedented equivalent spectral efficiency approaching 1000 bit/s/Hz. Moreover, it demonstrates profound resilience, maintaining high-fidelity reconstruction even when the physical-layer symbol error rate exceeds 36%, a condition under which conventional communication systems fail completely. Crucially, this deeply integrated co-design of semantic encoding and physical-layer modulation enables full semantic demodulation with only single-ended intensity detection, therefore significantly reducing system complexity and cost. This work establishes a validated pathway toward hyper-efficient, error-resilient optical networks for the next generation of data-intensive computing.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Quantum-Secured DSP-Lite Data Transmission Architectures for AI-Driven Data Centres

Artificial intelligence-driven (AI-driven) data centres, which require high-performance, scalable, energy-efficient, and secure infrastructure, have led to unprecedented data traffic demands. These demands involve low latency, high bandwidth connections, low power consumption, and data confidentiality. However, conventional optical interconnect solutions, such as intensity-modulated direct detection and traditional coherent systems, cannot address these requirements simultaneously. In particular, conventional encryption protocols that rely on complex algorithms are increasingly vulnerable to the rapid advancement of quantum computing. Here, we propose and demonstrate a quantum-secured digital signal processing-lite (DSP-Lite) data transmission architecture that meets all the stringent requirements for AI-driven data centre optical interconnects (AI-DCIs) scenarios. By integrating a self-homodyne coherent (SHC) system and quantum key distribution (QKD) through the multicore-fibre-based space division multiplexing (SDM) technology, our scheme enables secure, high-capacity, and energy-efficient data transmission while ensuring resilience against quantum computing threats. In our demonstration, we achieved an expandable transmission capacity of 2 Tbit per second (Tb/s) and a quantum secret key rate (SKR) of 229.2 kb/s, with a quantum bit error rate (QBER) of approximately 1.27% and with ultralow power consumption. Our work paves the way for constructing secure, scalable, and cost-efficient data transmission frameworks, thus enabling the next generation of intelligent, leak-proof optical interconnects for data centres.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Illumination strategies for space-bandwidth-time product improvement in Fourier ptychography

Fourier ptychography (FP) is a promising technique for high-throughput imaging. Reconstruction algorithms and illumination paradigm are two key aspects of FP. In this review, we mainly focus on illumination strategies in FP. We derive the space-bandwidth-time product (SBP-T) for the characterization of FP performance. Based on the analysis of SBP-T, we categorize the illumination strategy in FP effectively and discuss each category

physics.optics↗