Spin–orbit microlaser emitting in a four-dimensional Hilbert space

Zhifeng Zhang, Haoqi Zhao, Shuang Wu, Tianwei Wu, Xingdu Qiao, Zihe Gao, Ritesh Agarwal, Stefano Longhi, Natalia M. Litchinitser, Li Ge and Liang Feng ()
Additional contact information
Zhifeng Zhang: University of Pennsylvania
Haoqi Zhao: University of Pennsylvania
Shuang Wu: University of Pennsylvania
Tianwei Wu: University of Pennsylvania
Xingdu Qiao: University of Pennsylvania
Zihe Gao: University of Pennsylvania
Ritesh Agarwal: University of Pennsylvania
Stefano Longhi: Politecnico di Milano
Natalia M. Litchinitser: Duke University
Li Ge: College of Staten Island, CUNY
Liang Feng: University of Pennsylvania

Nature, 2022, vol. 612, issue 7939, 246-251

Abstract: Abstract A step towards the next generation of high-capacity, noise-resilient communication and computing technologies is a substantial increase in the dimensionality of information space and the synthesis of superposition states on an N-dimensional (N > 2) Hilbert space featuring exotic group symmetries. Despite the rapid development of photonic devices and systems, on-chip information technologies are mostly limited to two-level systems owing to the lack of sufficient reconfigurability to satisfy the stringent requirement for 2(N − 1) degrees of freedom, intrinsically associated with the increase of synthetic dimensionalities. Even with extensive efforts dedicated to recently emerged vector lasers and microcavities for the expansion of dimensionalities1–10, it still remains a challenge to actively tune the diversified, high-dimensional superposition states of light on demand. Here we demonstrate a hyperdimensional, spin–orbit microlaser for chip-scale flexible generation and manipulation of arbitrary four-level states. Two microcavities coupled through a non-Hermitian synthetic gauge field are designed to emit spin–orbit-coupled states of light with six degrees of freedom. The vectorial state of the emitted laser beam in free space can be mapped on a Bloch hypersphere defining an SU(4) symmetry, demonstrating dynamical generation and reconfiguration of high-dimensional superposition states with high fidelity.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05339-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:612:y:2022:i:7939:d:10.1038_s41586-022-05339-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05339-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().