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arXiv:1908.07210 · Physical Review Research

Experimental demonstration of cavity-free optical isolators and optical circulators

En-Ze Li, Dong-Sheng Ding, Yi-Chen Yu, Ming-Xin Dong, Lei Zeng, Wei-Hang Zhang, Ying-Hao Ye, Huai-Zhi Wu, Zhi-Han Zhu, Wei Gao, Guang-Can Guo, Bao-Sen Shi

Published Sep 29, 2020• 68 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The authors present experimental results pertaining to the realization of optical isolators and circulators. This paper realizes it experimentally with a cross-Kerr nonlinearity achieved with a medium comprising a thermal vapor of N-type atoms
DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.2.033517

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Optical nonlinearity has been widely used to try to produce optical isolators. However, this is very difficult to achieve due to dynamical reciprocity. Here, we show the use of the chiral cross-Kerr nonlinearity of atoms at room temperature to realize optical isolation, circumventing dynamical reciprocity. In our approach, the chiral cross-Kerr nonlinearity is induced by the thermal motion of N-type atoms. The resulting cross phase shift and absorption of a weak probe field are dependent on its propagation direction. This proposed optical isolator can achieve more than 30 dB of isolation ratio, with a low loss of less than 1 dB. By inserting this atomic medium in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, we further propose a four-port optical circulator with a fidelity larger than 0.9 and an average insertion loss less than 1.6 dB. Using atomic vapor embedded in an on-chip waveguide, our method may provide chip-compatible optical isolation at the single-photon level of a probe field.