Geometrical light transfer in optical waveguide arrays

Giuseppe Della Valle, Marco Ornigotti, Toney Teddy Fernandez +4 more

We report on the experimental demonstration of adiabatic light transfer between the outer waveguides in a finite array of evanescently coupled optical waveguides with negligible excitation of all the intermediate waveguides. Such a counterintuitive light transfer scheme is an optical analogue of stimulated Raman adiabatic passage via an auxiliary dressed state proposed in atomic physics for multilevel systems.

Zhaoming Zhu

H. S. Hristova, Andon A. Rangelov, S. Guérin +1 more

Adiabatic evolution of light in parallel curved optical waveguide array is investigated theoretically. This problem is shown to bear a close connection with the process of coherent population transfer in a ``bow-tie'' model in quantum physics. Under certain conditions on the geometry of the waveguides and the optical properties of the system complete light transfer between the outer waveguides is achieved. Special attention is paid to the case of three waveguides, which is analyzed using the solutions of the well-known bow-tie model. The analytic solution is used to design recipes for creating arbitrary superpositions of light intensity between the waveguides, with possible applications in achromatic optical multiple-beam splitters. For more than three waveguides complete light transfer between the outer waveguides and beam splitting is demonstrated numerically.

Virginie Coda, Hassan Oukraou, Andon A. Rangelov +1 more

Charles Ciret, Virginie Coda, Andon A. Rangelov +2 more

We demonstrate experimentally the broadband and adiabatic light transfer in coupled waveguides based on multiple stimulated Raman adiabatic passage. Our experimental platform utilizes planar-type reconfigurable optically induced waveguide arrays and allows for efficient and robust transfer of light from an input waveguide over multiple states (up to nine) to an output waveguide. The same waveguide structures are tested for two propagation wavelengths separated by more than 200 nm, proving the achromaticity of the transfer process.

Mariam Mariam, Mohammad, Nasser +4 more