近日，奥地利格拉茨大学的Peter Banzer及其研究小组取得一项新进展。经过不懈努力，他们成功利用可编程集成光子学产生自由空间结构光。相关研究成果已于2024年1月12日在国际知名学术期刊《自然—光子学》上发表。
在这项研究中，研究人员展示了一种多用途可编程集成光子处理器，它可以产生和控制大范围的高阶自由空间结构光束，而这些操作都是从单个注入波导开始的。该研究方法在亚毫秒内实现了对光的振幅和相位的精确控制，并且是完全可重构的，没有使用任何运动部件。这些研究进展通过结合集成光子学和自由空间结构光的优势，为利用空间调制光开辟了更多潜在的方法、应用和器件类型。
据悉，结构光是许多现代应用的核心要素，从超分辨率显微镜到成像、传感和量子信息处理领域都有广泛应用。随着这些强大工具的普及，对能够实现光的基本特性（如振幅、相位和偏振）进行空间操作的技术需求也日益增长。近年来，可重构集成光子学领域迅速发展，为光束整形提供了全新的解决方案。与现有器件相比，它不仅在速度上有优势，而且在占地面积、稳健性和转换效率等方面具有巨大的潜力。
附：英文原文
Title: Generating free-space structured light with programmable integrated photonics
Author: Btow, Johannes, Eismann, Jrg S., Sharma, Varun, Brandmller, Dorian, Banzer, Peter
Issue&Volume: 2024-01-12
Abstract: Structured light is a key component of many modern applications, ranging from super-resolution microscopy to imaging, sensing and quantum information processing. As the utilization of these powerful tools continues to spread, the demand for technologies that enable the spatial manipulation of fundamental properties of light, such as amplitude, phase and polarization grows further. The rapidly advancing field of reconfigurable integrated photonics allows entirely new routes towards beam shaping that not only outperform existing devices in terms of speed but also have substantial potential with respect to their footprints, robustness and conversion efficiencies. In this study, we demonstrate how a multipurpose programmable integrated photonic processor can generate and control a wide range of higher-order free-space structured light beams, all starting from only a single injection waveguide. Our method controls the distribution of light’s amplitude and phase within sub-milliseconds, and it is fully reconfigurable and has no moving parts. These advancements broaden the spectrum of potential methods, applications and devices that utilize spatially tailored light by providing a pathway to combine the strengths and versatility of integrated photonics and free-space structured light.
DOI: 10.1038/s41566-023-01354-2
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-023-01354-2