Volume 14, Issue 1

A combination of femtosecond stimulated Raman scattering and surface-enhanced Raman scattering, termed surface-enhanced stimulated Raman scattering (SE-FSRS), was proposed to leverage both temporal precision and sensitivity for advanced molecular dynamics analysis. During the initial successful implementations of this approach, unexpected spectral distortions were observed, and several potential explanations were proposed. Further progress in this novel technique and its broader implementation requires a profound understanding of the factors influencing the shape of the registered spectra and the underlying mechanisms. Here we present findings on how pulse energy and excitation wavelengths affect SE-FSRS spectra, emphasizing the influence of a strong broadband background on spectral dispersion. These insights contribute to understanding the complex mechanisms underlying SE-FSRS and suggest methods to improve the control and application of this spectroscopic technique, highlighting its potential to provide deeper insights into molecular dynamics. This work represents a significant step toward exploiting SE-FSRS for advanced analytical applications.

Optical vortex beams carrying orbit angular momentum have attracted significant attention recently. Perfect vortex beams, characterized by their topological charge-independent intensity profile, have important applications in enhancing communication capacity and optimizing particle manipulation. In this paper, metal-insulator-metal copper-coin type reflective metasurfaces are proposed to generate perfect composite vortex beams in X-band. We introduce the qualified equivalent circuit model based on the theory of transmission line to design the meta-atom of the structure. The experiments are performed to measure the far-field and near-field perfect composite vortex beams and evaluate their orbital angular momentum purity at different frequencies. The experimental results agree well with the theoretical predictions. This work provides new ideas and methods for generating high-quality metasurface-based perfect composite vortex beams in the microwave region, paving an ideal path for microwave communication systems, optical manipulation and radar detection.

Polar biaxial crystals with extreme anisotropy hold promise for the spatial control and the manipulation of polaritons, as they can undergo topological transitions. However, taking advantage of these unique properties for nanophotonic devices requires to find mechanisms to modulate dynamically the material response. Here, we present a study on the propagation of surface phonon polaritons (SPhPs) in a photonic architecture based on a thin layer of α-MoO 3 deposited on a semiconducting 4H-SiC substrate, whose carrier density can be tuned through photoinduction. By employing this system, we establish a comprehensive polaritonic platform where the propagation of the hybridized SPhPs can be manipulated dynamically due to their coupling with the electron plasma. Specifically, we demonstrate that increasing the doping of the 4H-SiC substrate allows for modulating the on/off switch behavior of SPhP propagation or its controlled canalization. Furthermore, this modulation leads to a notable increase in the Purcell factor, primarily attributed to the doping-induced flat dispersion curve creating ultra-slow light. These findings have significant implications for the development of nanophotonic and quantum technologies, as they enable the utilization of polaritonic materials exclusively.

Grating under auto-collimation configuration with polarization-independent high diffraction efficiency plays an important role in the displacement measurement system, spectral beam combining system and so on. In this paper, we proposed, for the first time, a reflective two-dimensional metal-dielectric grating of which the (−1, −1) order beam is diffracted back along the input light direction, when the incident azimuth angle is 45°. With optimized structure, the (−1, −1) order diffraction efficiencies of transverse electric polarization (TE) and transverse magnetic polarization (TM) are 95.01 % and 95.04 % at incident wavelength of 632 nm, respectively. The structure based on the frustum of a cone performs well in manufacturing tolerance, which provides possibility for practical applications. A grating is fabricated experimentally in this research. The high efficiencies of TE and TM polarization have great application potential in 2D displacement measurement technique and high power laser systems.

Topological insulators and bound states in the continuum represent two fascinating topics in the optical and photonic domain. The exploration of their interconnection and potential applications has emerged as a current research focus. Here, we investigated non-Hermitian photonics based on a parallel cascaded-resonator system, where both direct and indirect coupling between adjacent resonators can be independently manipulated. We observed the emergence of topological Fabry−Pérot bound states in the continuum in this non-Hermitian system, and theoretically validated its robustness. We also observed topological phase transitions and exceptional points in the same system. By elucidating the relationship between topological insulators and bound states in the continuum, this work will enable various applications that harness the advantages of bound states in the continuum, exceptional points, and topology. These applications may include optical delay and storage, highly robust optical devices, high-sensitivity sensing, and chiral mode switching.

The formed optical cavity mode intensively relies on the size and geometry of optical cavity. When the defect or impurity exists inside the cavity, the formed cavity mode will be destroyed. Here, we propose a metacavity consisting of arrays of linear-crossing metamaterials (LCMMs) with abnormal dispersion, where each LCMM offers both the directional propagation channel for all incident angles and the negative refraction across its neighboring LCMMs. Such metacavity can be efficiently excited by a point source, where the excited wave vector components propagate along the same optical path in the cavity. More importantly, the proposed metacavity possesses the remarkable feature of partial defect immunity and geometry robustness. Assisted by two-dimensional transmission lines with loaded-circuit elements, a metacavity with partial defect immunity has been experimentally realized. Our work offers a new avenue for designing optical resonators excited by the point source in integrated photonics, which is very useful for high-efficiency filters, ultrasensitive sensors, and enhancement of light–matter interactions.

Sum-frequency generation (SFG) enables the coherent upconversion of electromagnetic signals and plays a significant role in mid-infrared vibrational spectroscopy for molecular analysis. Recent research indicates that plasmonic nanocavities, which confine light to extremely small volumes, can facilitate the detection of vibrational SFG signals from individual molecules by leveraging surface-enhanced Raman scattering combined with mid-infrared laser excitation. In this article, we compute the degree of second order coherence ( g (2) (0)) of the upconverted mid-infrared field under realistic parameters and accounting for the anharmonic potential that characterizes vibrational modes of individual molecules. On the one hand, we delineate the regime in which the device should operate in order to preserve the second-order coherence of the mid-infrared source, as required in quantum applications. On the other hand, we show that an anharmonic molecular potential can lead to antibunching of the upconverted photons under coherent, Poisson-distributed mid-infrared and visible drives. Our results therefore open a path toward bright and tunable source of indistinguishable single photons by leveraging “vibrational blockade” in a resonantly and parametrically driven molecule, without the need for strong light-matter coupling.

Acoustoplasmonic resonators, such as nanobars and crosses, are efficient acousto-optical transducers. The excitation of mechanical modes in these structures strongly depends on the spatial profile of the eigenmodes of the resonator. Using a system of two identical gold elongated bars placed on a silicon dioxide substrate, we examine how breaking mirror symmetries affects the optical and acoustic properties to provide insights in the design of acoustoplasmonic metasurfaces for nonsymmetric acousto-optical transducers. Our findings show that the absence of mirror symmetries affects differently the optical and nanomechanical response. Broken mirror symmetries not only couple nanomechanical modes existing in single bars but introduce new torsional resonant modes.

Non-Hermitian (NH) photonic systems leverage gain and loss to open new directions for nanophotonic technologies. However, the quantum and thermal noise intrinsically associated with gain/loss affects the eigenvalue/eigenvector structure of NH systems, and thus the existence of exceptional points, as well as the practical noise performance of these systems. Here, we present a comparative analysis of the impact of different gain and loss mechanisms on the noise generated in gain–loss compensated NH waveguide systems. Our results highlight important differences in the eigenvalue/eigenvector structure, noise power, photon statistics and squeezing. At the same time, we identify some universal properties such as the occurrence of phase-transition points in parameter space and intriguing phenomena related to them, including coalescence of pairs of eigenvectors, gain–loss compensation, and linear scaling of the noise with the length of the waveguide. We believe that these results contribute to a better understanding of the impact of the gain/loss mechanism on the noise generated in NH systems.

We present a continuative definition of topological charge to depict the polarization defects on any resonant diffraction orders in photonic crystal slab regardless they are radiative or evanescent. By using such a generalized definition, we investigate the origins and conservation of polarization defects across the whole Brillouin zone. We found that the mode crossings due to Brillouin zone folding contribute to the emergence of polarization defects in the entire Brillouin zone. These polarization defects eventually originate from the spontaneous symmetry breaking of line degeneracies fixed at Brillouin zone center or edges, or inter-band coupling caused by accidental Bloch band crossings. Unlike Bloch states, the polarization defects live and evolve in an unbound momentum space, obeying a local conservation law as a direct consequence of Stokes’ theorem, but the total charge number is countless.

Gesture recognition plays a significant role in human-machine interaction (HMI) system. This paper proposes a gesture-controlled reconfigurable metasurface system based on surface electromyography (sEMG) for real-time beam deflection and polarization conversion. By recognizing the sEMG signals of user gestures through a pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN) model, the system dynamically modulates the metasurface, enabling precise control of the deflection direction and polarization state of electromagnetic waves. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system achieves high-precision electromagnetic wave manipulation, in response to different gestures. This system has significant potential applications in intelligent device control, virtual reality systems, and wireless communication technology, and is expected to contribute to the advancement and innovation of HMI technology by integration of more advanced metasurfaces and sEMG processing technologies.