Supersymmetric mode converters

摘要

In recent years, the ever-increasing demand for high-capacity transmission systems has driven remarkable advances in technologies that encode information on an optical signal. Mode-division multiplexing makes use of individual modes supported by an optical waveguide as mutually orthogonal channels. The key requirement in this approach is the capability to selectively populate and extract specific modes. Optical supersymmetry (SUSY) has recently been proposed as a particularly elegant way to resolve this design challenge in a manner that is inherently scalable, and at the same time maintains compatibility with existing multiplexing strategies. Supersymmetric partners of multimode waveguides are characterized by the fact that they share all of their effective indices with the original waveguide. The crucial exception is the fundamental mode, which is absent from the spectrum of the partner waveguide. Here, we demonstrate experimentally how this global phase-matching property can be exploited for efficient mode conversion. Multimode structures and their superpartners are experimentally realized in coupled networks of femtosecond laser-written waveguides, and the corresponding light dynamics are directly observed by means of fluorescence microscopy. We show that SUSY transformations can readily facilitate the removal of the fundamental mode from multimode optical structures. In turn, hierarchical sequences of such SUSY partners naturally implement the conversion between modes of adjacent order. Our experiments illustrate just one of the many possibilities of how SUSY may serve as a building block for integrated mode-division multiplexing arrangements. Supersymmetric notions may enrich and expand integrated photonics by versatile optical components and desirable, yet previously unattainable, functionalities.