Practical high-dimensional quantum key distribution protocol over deployed multicore fiber

Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a secure communication scheme for sharing symmetric cryptographic keys based on the laws of quantum physics, and is considered a key player in the realm of cyber-security. A critical challenge for QKD systems comes from the fact that the ever-increasing rates at which digital data are transmitted require more and more performing sources of quantum keys, primarily in terms of secret key generation rate. High-dimensional QKD based on path encoding has been proposed as a candidate approach to address this challenge. However, while proof-of-principle demonstrations based on lab experiments have been reported in the literature, demonstrations in realistic environments are still missing. Here we report the generation of secret keys in a 4-dimensional hybrid time-path-encoded QKD system over a 52-km deployed multicore fiber link forming by looping back two cores of a 26-km 4-core optical fiber. Our results indicate that robust high-dimensional QKD can be implemented in a realistic environment by combining standard telecom equipment with emerging multicore fiber technology.

Integrated dual-laser photonic chip for high-purity carrier generation enabling ultrafast terahertz wireless communications

Photonic generation of Terahertz (THz) carriers displays high potential for THz communications with a large tunable range and high modulation bandwidth. While many photonics-based THz generations have recently been demonstrated with discrete bulky components, their practical applications are significantly hindered by the large footprint and high energy consumption. Herein, we present an injection-locked heterodyne source based on generic foundry-fabricated photonic integrated circuits (PIC) attached to a uni-traveling carrier photodiode generating high-purity THz carriers. The generated THz carrier is tunable within the range of 0–1.4 THz, determined by the wavelength spacing between the two monolithically integrated distributed feedback (DFB) lasers. This scheme generates and transmits a 131 Gbits⁻¹ net rate signal over a 10.7-m distance with −24 dBm emitted power at 0.4 THz. This monolithic dual-DFB PIC-based THz generation approach is a significant step towards fully integrated, cost-effective, and energy-efficient THz transmitters.

A photonic Terahertz source based on injection-locking an integrated dual-laser chip generates and transmits a 131 Gbps THz signal over 10.7-m distance, showing great potential towards fully integrated and energy-efficient THz transmitters for 6G.

A programmable qudit-based quantum processor

Controlling and programming quantum devices to process quantum information by the unit of quantum dit, i.e., qudit, provides the possibilities for noise-resilient quantum communications, delicate quantum molecular simulations, and efficient quantum computations, showing great potential to enhance the capabilities of qubit-based quantum technologies. Here, we report a programmable qudit-based quantum processor in silicon-photonic integrated circuits and demonstrate its enhancement of quantum computational parallelism. The processor monolithically integrates all the key functionalities and capabilities of initialisation, manipulation, and measurement of the two quantum quart (ququart) states and multi-value quantum-controlled logic gates with high-level fidelities. By reprogramming the configuration of the processor, we implemented the most basic quantum Fourier transform algorithms, all in quaternary, to benchmark the enhancement of quantum parallelism using qudits, which include generalised Deutsch-Jozsa and Bernstein-Vazirani algorithms, quaternary phase estimation and fast factorization algorithms. The monolithic integration and high programmability have allowed the implementations of more than one million high-fidelity preparations, operations and projections of qudit states in the processor. Our work shows an integrated photonic quantum technology for qudit-based quantum computing with enhanced capacity, accuracy, and efficiency, which could lead to the acceleration of building a large-scale quantum computer.

DSP-free single-wavelength 100 Gbps SDM-PON with increased splitting ratio using 10G-class DML

We present beyond 100 Gbps space-division multiplexing passive optical network (SDM-PON) systems using commercial 10G-class directly modulated laser (DML) modulated with 25/28 Gbps data signals, with polarization-diversity micro-ring resonator (PD-MRR) to improve the extinction ratio (ER). A high-count multi-core fiber (HC-MCF) with low-crosstalk (XT) is used in the system, simultaneously increasing the transmission capacity and splitting ratio. Different cores of the HC-MCF are used for upstream (US) and downstream (DS) transmission, avoiding the Rayleigh backscattering noise. Thanks to compatibility with time-division multiplexing (TDM), the splitting ratio could be further increased. In addition, both symmetric and asymmetric SDM-PON architectures are proposed to meet different requirements of users. In the SDM-PON systems, a simple intensity modulation/ directly detection (IM/DD) is applied without digital signal processing (DSP), which may be a promising candidate for future large-capacity and high splitting ratio access networks.

Silicon/silicon-rich nitride hybrid-core waveguide for nonlinear optics

A silicon/silicon-rich nitride hybrid-core waveguide has been proposed and experimentally demonstrated for nonlinear applications to fill the gap between the pure silicon waveguide and the pure silicon nitride waveguide with respect to the nonlinear properties. The hybrid-core waveguide presented here leverages the advantages of the silicon and the silicon-rich nitride waveguide platforms, showing a large nonlinearity γ of 72 ± 5 W^-1 m^-1 for energy-efficient four-wave mixing wavelength conversion. At the same time, the drawbacks of the material platforms are dramatically mitigated, exhibiting a reduced two-photon absorption coefficient β_TPA of 0.023 cm/GW resulting in an increased nonlinear figure-of-merit as large as 21.6. A four-wave-mixing conversion efficiency as large as -5.3 dB has been achieved with the promise to be larger than 0 dB. These findings are strong arguments supporting the silicon/silicon-rich nitride hybrid-core waveguide to be used for energy-efficient nonlinear photonic applications.

300 Gb/s IM/DD based SDM-WDM-PON with laserless ONUs

A low-cost, high-speed SDM-WDM-PON architecture is proposed by using a multi-core fiber (MCF) and intensity modulation/directly detection (IM/DD). One of the MCF cores is used for sending laser sources from optical line terminal (OLT) to optical network unit (ONU), thus facilitating laserless and colorless ONUs, and providing ease of network management and maintenance. In addition, the wavelengths of the ONUs are controlled on the OLT side, which also enables flexible optical networks. Thanks to the low inter-core crosstalk of a MCF, downstream (DS) and upstream (US) signals are transmitted independently in different cores of the MCF, not only increasing the aggregated capacity but also avoiding the Rayleigh backscattering noise. Finally, a proof-of-principle experiment is performed by using a 7-core fiber, achieving 300 /120 Gb/s aggregated capacity for DS and US (3 × cores, 4 × wavelengths, 25/10 Gb/s per wavelength), respectively.

Compact titanium dioxide waveguides with high nonlinearity at telecommunication wavelengths

Dense integration of photonic integrated circuits demands waveguides simultaneously fulfilling requirements on compactness, low loss, high nonlinearity, and capabilities for mass production. In this work, titanium dioxide waveguides with a thick core of 380 nm exhibiting a compact mode size (0.43 μm²) and a low loss (5.4 ± 1 dB/cm) at telecommunication wavelengths around 1550 nm have been fabricated and measured. A microring resonator having a 50 μm radius has been measured to have a loaded quality factor of 53500. Four-wave mixing experiments reveal a nonlinear parameter for the waveguides of 21-34 W^-1 m^-1 corresponding to a nonlinear index around 2.3-3.6 x 10^-18 m²/W, which results in a wavelength conversion efficiency of -36.2 dB. These performances, together with the potentially simple dispersion engineering to the fabricated waveguides by the post processes, yield a strong promise for the titanium dioxide waveguides applied in photonic integrated circuits, especially for nonlinear implementations.

Efficient electro-optic modulation in low-loss graphene-plasmonic slot waveguides

Surface plasmon polaritons enable light concentration within subwavelength regions, opening thereby new avenues for miniaturizing the device and strengthening light-matter interactions. Here we realize efficient electro-optic modulation in low-loss plasmonic waveguides with the aid of graphene, and the devices are fully integrated in the silicon-on-insulator platform. By advantageously exploiting low-loss plasmonic slot-waveguide modes, which weakly leak into a substrate while featuring strong fields within the two-layer-graphene covered slots in metals, we successfully achieve a tunability of 0.13 dB μm^-1 for our fabricated graphene-plasmonic waveguide devices with extremely low insertion loss, which outperforms previously reported graphene-plasmonic devices. Our results highlight the potential of graphene plasmonic leaky-mode hybrid waveguides to realize active ultra-compact devices for optoelectronic applications.

Optimization and characterization of highly nonlinear fiber for broadband optical time lens applications

We demonstrate simple and intuitive methods, for dispersion optimization and characterization of highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) for use in four-wave-mixing (FWM) based time lens applications. A composite dispersion-flattened HNLF is optimized for high bandwidth time lens processing, by segmentation to mitigate FWM impairments due to dispersion fluctuations. The fiber is used for FWM conversion of 32 WDM-channels with 50 GHz spacing in a time lens, with -4.6 dB total efficiency, and <1 dB per-channel efficiency difference. The novel characterization method is based on two tunable continuous-wave lasers. The method is experimentally verified to predict the spectral output profile of time lenses for broadband multicarrier input, with detailed numerical simulations for support.

Detailed characterization of CW- and pulsed-pump four-wave mixing in highly nonlinear fibers

We present a quantitative comparison of continuous-wave- (CW) and pulsed-pump four-wave mixing (FWM) in commercially available highly nonlinear fibers (HNLFs), and suggest properties for which the CW- and pulsed-pump FWM bandwidths are limited in practice. The CW- and pulsed-pump parametric gain is characterized experimentally for several HNLFs with various dispersion properties, including zero-dispersion wavelength fluctuations, and the results are interpreted in conjunction with detailed numerical simulations. It is found that a low third-order dispersion (TOD) is essential for the pulsed-pump FWM bandwidth. However, an inverse scaling of the TOD with the dispersion fluctuations leads to different CW-optimized fibers, which depend only on the even dispersion orders.

THz photonic wireless links with 16-QAM modulation in the 375-450 GHz band

We propose and experimentally demonstrate THz photonic wireless communication systems with 16-QAM modulation in the 375-450 GHz band. The overall throughput reaches as high as 80 Gbit/s by exploiting four THz channels with 5 Gbaud 16-QAM baseband modulation per channel. We create a coherent optical frequency comb (OFC) for photonic generation of multiple THz carriers based on photo-mixing in a uni-travelling carrier photodiode (UTC-PD). The OFC configuration also allows us to generate reconfigurable THz carriers with low phase noise. The multiple-channel THz radiation is received by using a Schottky mixer based electrical receiver after 0.5 m free-space wireless propagation. 2-channel (40 Gbit/s) and 4-channel (80 Gbit/s) THz photonic wireless links with 16-QAM modulation are reported in this paper, and the bit error rate (BER) performance for all channels in both cases is below the hard decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) threshold of 3.8e-3 with 7% overhead. In addition, we also successfully demonstrate hybrid photonic wireless transmission of 40 Gbit/s 16-QAM signal at carrier frequencies of 400 GHz and 425 GHz over 30 km standard single mode fiber (SSMF) between the optical baseband signal transmitter and the THz wireless transmitter with negligible induced power penalty.

320 Gb/s Nyquist OTDM received by polarization-insensitive time-domain OFT

We have demonstrated the generation of a 320 Gb/s Nyquist-OTDM signal by rectangular filtering on an RZ-OTDM signal with the filter bandwidth (320 GHz) equal to the baud rate (320 Gbaud) and the reception of such a Nyquist-OTDM signal using polarization-insensitive time-domain optical Fourier transformation (TD-OFT) followed by passive filtering. After the time-to-frequency mapping in the TD-OFT, the Nyquist-OTDM signal with its characteristic sinc-shaped time-domain trace is converted into an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signal with sinc-shaped spectra for each subcarrier. The subcarrier frequency spacing of the converted OFDM signal is designed to be larger than the transform-limited case, here 10 times greater than the symbol rate of each subcarrier. Therefore, only passive filtering is needed to extract the subcarriers of the converted OFDM signal. In addition, a polarization diversity scheme is used in the four-wave mixing (FWM) based TD-OFT, and less than 0.5 dB polarization sensitivity is demonstrated in the OTDM receiver.

All-optical OFDM demultiplexing by spectral magnification and band-pass filtering

We propose a simple OFDM receiver allowing for the use of standard WDM receivers to receive spectrally advanced OFDM signals. We propose to spectrally magnify the optical-OFDM super-channels using a spectral telescope consisting of two time-lenses, which enables reduced inter-carrier-interference in subcarrier detection by simple band-pass filtering. A demonstration on an emulated 100 Gbit/s DPSK optical-OFDM channel shows improved sensitivities after 4-times spectral magnification.

Automatic DGD and GVD compensation at 640 Gb/s based on scalar radio-frequency spectrum measurement

We demonstrate what we believe to be the first real-time impairment-cancellation system for group-velocity dispersion (GVD) and differential group delay (DGD) for a 640 Gb/s single-channel signal. Simultaneous compensation of two independent parameters is demonstrated by feedback control of separate GVD and DGD compensators using an impairment monitor based on an integrated all-optical radio-frequency (RF) spectrum analyzer. We show that low-bandwidth measurement of only a single tone in the RF spectrum is sufficient for automatic compensation for multiple degrees of freedom using a multivariate optimization scheme.

Forward error correction supported 150 Gbit/s error-free wavelength conversion based on cross phase modulation in silicon

We build a forward error correction (FEC) module and implement it in an optical signal processing experiment. The experiment consists of two cascaded nonlinear optical signal processes, 160 Gbit/s all optical wavelength conversion based on the cross phase modulation (XPM) in a silicon nanowire and subsequent 160 Gbit/s-to-10 Gbit/s demultiplexing in a highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF). The XPM based all optical wavelength conversion in silicon is achieved by off-center filtering the red shifted sideband on the CW probe. We thoroughly demonstrate and verify that the FEC code operates correctly after the optical signal processing, yielding truly error-free 150 Gbit/s (excl. overhead) optically signal processed data after the two cascaded nonlinear processes.

Nonlinear properties of and nonlinear processing in hydrogenated amorphous silicon waveguides

We propose hydrogenated amorphous silicon nanowires as a platform for nonlinear optics in the telecommunication wavelength range. Extraction of the nonlinear parameter of these photonic nanowires reveals a figure of merit larger than 2. It is observed that the nonlinear optical properties of these waveguides degrade with time, but that this degradation can be reversed by annealing the samples. A four wave mixing conversion efficiency of + 12 dB is demonstrated in a 320 Gbit/s serial optical waveform data sampling experiment in a 4 mm long photonic nanowire.

Ultra-high-speed optical serial-to-parallel data conversion by time-domain optical Fourier transformation in a silicon nanowire

We demonstrate conversion from 64 × 10 Gbit/s optical time-division multiplexed (OTDM) data to dense wavelength division multiplexed (DWDM) data with 25 GHz spacing. The conversion is achieved by time-domain optical Fourier transformation (OFT) based on four-wave mixing (FWM) in a 3.6 mm long silicon nanowire. A total of 40 out of 64 tributaries of a 64 × 10 Gbit/s OTDM-DPSK data signal are simultaneously converted with a bit-error rate (BER) performance below the 2 × 10(-3) FEC limit. Using a 50 m long highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) for higher FWM conversion efficiency, 43 tributaries of a 64 × 10 Gbit/s OTDM-OOK data signal are converted with error-free performance (BER<10(-9)).

One-to-six WDM multicasting of DPSK signals based on dual-pump four-wave mixing in a silicon waveguide

We present WDM multicasting based on dual-pump four-wave mixing in a 3-mm long dispersion engineered silicon waveguide. One-to-six phase-preserving WDM multicasting of 10-Gb/s differential phase-shift-keying (DPSK) data is experimentally demonstrated with bit-error rate measurements. All the six multicast signals show error-free performance with power penalty less than 3.8 dB.

Ultra-high-speed wavelength conversion in a silicon photonic chip

We have successfully demonstrated all-optical wavelength conversion of a 640-Gbit/s line-rate return-to-zero differential phase-shift keying (RZ-DPSK) signal based on low-power four wave mixing (FWM) in a silicon photonic chip with a switching energy of only ~110 fJ/bit. The waveguide dispersion of the silicon nanowire is nano-engineered to optimize phase matching for FWM and the switching power used for the signal processing is low enough to reduce nonlinear absorption from two-photon-absorption (TPA). These results demonstrate that high-speed wavelength conversion is achievable in silicon chips with high data integrity and indicate that high-speed operation can be obtained at moderate power levels where nonlinear absorption due to TPA and free-carrier absorption (FCA) is not detrimental. This demonstration can potentially enable high-speed optical networks on a silicon photonic chip.

Optical switching and detection of 640 Gbits/s optical time-division multiplexed data packets transmitted over 50 km of fiber

We demonstrate 1×4 optical-packet switching with error-free transmission of 640 Gbits/s single-wavelength optical time-division multiplexed data packets including clock distribution and short pulse generation for optical time demultiplexing based on a cavityless pulse source.

Photonic chip based transmitter optimization and receiver demultiplexing of a 1.28 Tbit/s OTDM signal

We demonstrate chip-based Tbaud optical signal processing for all-optical performance monitoring, switching and demultiplexing based on the instantaneous Kerr nonlinearity in a dispersion-engineered As(2)S(3) planar waveguide. At the Tbaud transmitter, we use a THz bandwidth radio-frequency spectrum analyzer to perform all-optical performance monitoring and to optimize the optical time division multiplexing stages as well as mitigate impairments, for example, dispersion. At the Tbaud receiver, we demonstrate error-free demultiplexing of a 1.28 Tbit/s single wavelength, return-to-zero signal to 10 Gbit/s via four-wave mixing with negligible system penalty (< 0.5 dB). Excellent performance, including high four-wave mixing conversion efficiency and no indication of an error-floor, was achieved. Our results establish the feasibility of Tbaud signal processing using compact nonlinear planar waveguides for Tbit/s Ethernet applications.

Demonstration of 5.1 Tbit/s data capacity on a single-wavelength channel

We have generated a single-wavelength data signal with a data capacity of 5.1 Tbit/s. The enabling techniques to generate the data signal are optical time-division multiplexing up to a symbol rate of 1.28 Tbaud, differential quadrature phase shift keying as data format, and polarisation-multiplexing. For the first time, error-free performance with a bit error rate less than 10(-9) is demonstrated for the 5.1 Tbit/s data signal. This is achieved in a back-to-back configuration using a direct detection receiver based on polarisation- and time-demultiplexing, delay-demodulation and balanced photo-detection.

Breakthrough switching speed with an all-optical chalcogenide glass chip: 640 Gbit/s demultiplexing

We report the first demonstration of error-free 640 Gbit/s demultiplexing using the Kerr non-linearity of an only 5 cm long chalcogenide glass waveguide chip. Our approach exploits four-wave mixing by the instantaneous nonlinear response of chalcogenide. Excellent performance is achieved with only 2 dB average power penalty and no indication of error-floor. Characterisation of the FWM efficiency for the chalcogenide waveguide is given and confirms the good performance of the device.

320 Gbps to 10 GHz sub-clock recovery using a PPLN-based opto-electronic phase-locked loop

We present successful extraction of a 10 GHz clock from single-wavelength 160 and 320 Gbps OTDM data streams, using an opto-electronic phase-locked loop based on three-wave mixing in periodically-poled lithium niobate as a phase comparator.