Topological photonic orbital angular momentum switch

Abstract

The large number of available orbital angular momentum (OAM) states of photons provides a unique resource for many important applications in quantum information and optical communications. However, conventional OAM switching devices usually rely on precise parameter control and are limited by slow switching rate and low efficiency. Here we propose a robust, fast and efficient photonic OAM switch device based on a topological process, where photons are adiabatically pumped to a target OAM state on demand. Such topological OAM pumping can be realized through manipulating photons in a few degenerate main cavities and involves only a limited number of optical elements. A large change of OAM at $\sim 10^q$ can be realized with only $q$ degenerate main cavities and at most $5q$ pumping cycles. The topological photonic OAM switch may become a powerful device for broad applications in many different fields and motivate novel topological design of conventional optical devices.

10 pages, 9 figures

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• Synthetic Dimension in Photonics
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• Topological phases in ring resonators: recent progress and future prospects
• A comprehensive review on developments of synthetic dimensions
• Creating locally interacting Hamiltonians in the synthetic frequency dimension for photons
• Single Pulse Manipulations in Synthetic Time-frequency Space
• Simulating topological materials with photonic synthetic dimensions in cavities
• Creating high-dimensional topological physics using a single ring resonator
• Quantized topological phases beyond square lattices in Floquet synthetic dimensions
• Topology and criticality in non-Hermitian multimodal optical resonators through engineered losses
• Soliton Pumping in the Rice-Mele Model with On-Cell Kerr Nonlinearity