Compact ultra-broadband light coupling on chip via nonadiabatic pumping

Abstract

Enlarging bandwidth capacity of the integrated photonic systems demands efficient and broadband light coupling among optical elements, which has been a vital issue in integrated photonics. Here, we have developed a compact ultra-broadband light coupling strategy based on nonadiabatic pumping in coupled optical waveguides, and experimentally demonstrated the designs in thin-film lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) platform. We found that nonadiabatic transition would produce a decreased dispersion of the phases related to eigenstates in the waveguides. As a consequence, we realized high-efficiency directional transfer between edgestates for various wavelengths covering a 1-dB bandwidth of ~320 nm in experiment (>400 nm in simulation), with a coupling length (~50 μm) approximately 1/10 of that required in the adiabatic regime. Furthermore, we have constructed complex functional devices including beamsplitter and multiple-level cascaded networks for broadband light routing and splitting. Our work preserves significant advantages simultaneously in extending the operation bandwidth and minimizing the footprint, which demonstrates great potential for large-scale and compact photonic integration on chip.