Recurrent neural networks excel at temporal tasks and video processing but require energy-intensive sequential memory operations. We demonstrate that multimode optical fibers naturally implement spatiotemporal recurrent computation through passive light propagation. Video frames are encoded onto separate optical beams with controlled time delays; these beams combine and recirculate through a fiber loop where interference and nonlinear propagation generate high-dimensional states encoding both current inputs and fading memory. Remarkably, the entire optical system remains fixed with no trainable parameters or electronic feedback, yet this single physical configuration achieves competitive performance across diverse temporal and spatiotemporal learning tasks: chaotic time-series forecasting, human action recognition, steering angle prediction, and surgical skill assessment. Our results show that recurrent temporal processing can emerge directly from spatiotemporal wave dynamics. This paradigm shift from algorithmic to physical recurrence offers an energy-efficient pathway to temporal artificial intelligence by leveraging intrinsic spatiotemporal optical nonlinearities within multimode fibers.
Linh Nguyen, Jamison Sloan, Nicholas Rivera
et al.
Non-classical states of light, such as number-squeezed light, with fluctuations below the classical shot noise level, have important uses in metrology, communication, quantum information processing, and quantum simulation. However, generating these non-classical states of light, especially with high intensity and high degree of squeezing, is challenging. To address this problem, we introduce a new concept which uses gain to generate intense sub-Poissonian light at optical frequencies. It exploits a strongly nonlinear gain for photons which arises from a combination of frequency-dependent gain and Kerr nonlinearity. In this laser architecture, the interaction between the gain medium and Kerr nonlinearity suppresses the spontaneous emission at high photon number states, leading to a strong "negative feedback" that suppresses photon-number fluctuations. We discuss realistic implementations of this concept based on the use of solid-state gain media in laser cavities with Kerr nonlinear materials, showing how 90% squeezing of photon number fluctuations below the shot noise level can be realized.
Multicore optical fibers and ribbons based on fiber arrays allow for massively parallel transmission of signals via spatially separated channels, thereby offering attractive bandwidth scaling with linearly increasing technical effort. However, low-loss coupling of light between fiber arrays or multicore fibers and standard linear arrays of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL) or photodiodes (PD) still represents a challenge. In this paper, we demonstrate that 3D-printed facet-attached microlenses (FaML) offer an attractive path for connecting multimode fiber arrays as well as individual cores of multimode multicore fibers to standard arrays of VCSEL or PD. The freeform coupling elements are printed in situ with high precision on the device and fiber facets by high-resolution multi-photon lithography. We demonstrate coupling losses down to 0.35 dB along with lateral 1 dB alignment tolerances in excess of 10 $μ$m, allowing to leverage fast passive assembly techniques that rely on industry-standard machine vision. To the best of our knowledge, our experiments represent the first demonstration of a coupling interface that connects individual cores of a multicore fiber to VCSEL or PD arranged in a standard linear array without the need for additional fiber-based or waveguide-based fan-out structures. Using this approach, we build a 3 x 25 Gbit/s transceiver assembly which fits into a small form-factor pluggable module and which fulfills many performance metrics specified in the IEEE 802.3 standard.
Electrical excitation of light using inelastic electron tunneling is a promising approach for the realization of ultra-compact on-chip optical sources with high modulation bandwidth. However, the practical implementation of these nanoscale light sources presents a challenge due to the low electron-to-photon transduction efficiencies. Here, we investigate designs for the enhancement of light generation and out-coupling in a periodic Ag-SiO2-Ag tunnel junction due to inelastic electron tunneling. The structure presents a unique advantage of a simple fabrication procedure as compared to the other reported structures. By efficiently coupling the gap plasmon mode and the lattice resonance, we achieve a resonant enhancement in the local density of optical states up to three orders of magnitude and enhanced radiative efficiency of ~0.53, 30% higher as compared to the uncoupled structure.
Optical diffraction tomography (ODT) is a three-dimensional (3D) label-free imaging technique. The 3D refractive index distribution of a sample can be reconstructed from multiple two-dimensional optical field images via ODT. Herein, we introduce a temporally low-coherence ODT technique using a ferroelectric liquid crystal spatial light modulator (FLC SLM). The fast binary-phase modulation provided by the FLC SLM ensures a high spatiotemporal resolution with considerably reduced coherent noise. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed system using various samples, including colloidal microspheres and live epithelial cells.
Daler R. Dadadzhanov, Tigran A. Vartanyan, Peter S. Parfenov
et al.
Chemiphores are entities, which exhibit wide-band light emission without any external light source but just due to the chemical reaction resulting in the chemiluminescence effect. Since the chemiphores usually have low quantum efficiency, chemiluminescence is a weak optical effect. We found that plasmonic nanoparticles can efficiently enhance the peculiar effect of chemiluminescence due to the acceleration of the radiative decay of the chemiphore excited state which, in turn, enlarges the chemiluminescence yield. Correspondingly, plasmonic nanoparticles are nanoparticles with sub-wavelength sizes experiencing the absorption band in specific wavelength which are characterized by unique optical properties, as well as high localization of electromagnetic radiation. However, the broadband properties of plasmonic nanoparticles and their implications in liquid light, the chemiluminescence effect, is overlooked. Therefore, they can attract attention as novel materials for photonics, sensing, and forensic science. Here, fabrication techniques of broadband plasmonic nanoparticles are reported, and their interesting optical properties together with their applications in chemiluminescence effect are discussed, as well. We fabricated the nanoparticles with laser ablation in liquids (LAL) technique and propose the physical vapor deposition (PVD) synthesis with annealing-assisted treatment for further studies. Both techniques are accessible and allow production of ensembles of nanoparticles having shape and size distributions to exhibit broad plasmonic resonance which fit the wide-band emission of a chemiphore. Our results, in particular, a specific design for plasmonic nanoparticles placed on the dielectric material, lead the way toward a new generation of chemiluminescence-based devices starting from sensing, healthcare, biomedical research and quantum systems such as pump-free laser sources.
Roman Shakhovoy, Denis Sych, Violetta Sharoglazova
et al.
We propose a method for quantum noise extraction from the interference of laser pulses with random phase. Our technique is based on the calculation of a parameter, which we called the quantum reduction factor, and which allows determining the contributions of quantum and classical noises in the assumption that classical fluctuations exhibit Gaussian distribution. To the best of our knowledge, the concept of the quantum reduction factor is introduced for the first time. We use such an approach to implement the post-processing-free optical quantum random number generator with the random bit generation rate of 2 Gbps.
These notes, intended to be self contained and tutorial, present a direct, macroscopic approach to quantizing light inside a linear-response dielectric material when both spectral dispersion and spatial nonuniformity are present, but the spectral region of interest is optically transparent so that explicit treatment of the underlying physics of the medium is not needed. The approach taken is based on the macroscopic Maxwell equations and a corresponding Hamiltonian, without the use of Lagrangians or any dynamical model for the medium, and uses a standard mode-based quantization method. The treatment covers: energy density and flux in a dispersive dielectric; a summary of the inverse permittivity formalism; a new derivation of the mode normalization condition; a direct proof of the nonorthogonality of the modes; examples of quantized field expressions for the general case and various special cases; the relationship between group velocity and energy flux; the band approximation and the continuum limit; and quantum optical treatment of waveguide modes.
Francesco Lenzini, Alexander N. Poddubny, James Titchener
et al.
Integrated photonics is a leading platform for quantum technologies including nonclassical state generation \cite{Vergyris:2016-35975:SRP, Solntsev:2014-31007:PRX, Silverstone:2014-104:NPHOT, Solntsev:2016:RPH}, demonstration of quantum computational complexity \cite{Lamitral_NJP2016} and secure quantum communications \cite{Zhang:2014-130501:PRL}. As photonic circuits grow in complexity, full quantum tomography becomes impractical, and therefore an efficient method for their characterization \cite{Lobino:2008-563:SCI, Rahimi-Keshari:2011-13006:NJP} is essential. Here we propose and demonstrate a fast, reliable method for reconstructing the two-photon state produced by an arbitrary quadratically nonlinear optical circuit. By establishing a rigorous correspondence between the generated quantum state and classical sum-frequency generation measurements from laser light, we overcome the limitations of previous approaches for lossy multimode devices \cite{Liscidini:2013-193602:PRL, Helt:2015-1460:OL}. We applied this protocol to a multi-channel nonlinear waveguide network, and measured a 99.28$\pm$0.31\% fidelity between classical and quantum characterization. This technique enables fast and precise evaluation of nonlinear quantum photonic networks, a crucial step towards complex, large-scale, device production.
The control of light transmission through a Fabry-Perot cavity containing atoms is theoretically investigated, when the cavity mode beam and an intersecting control beam are both close to specific atomic resonances. A four-level atomic system is considered and its interaction with the cavity mode is studied by solving for the time dependent cavity field and atomic state populations. The conditions for optical bistability of the atom-cavity system are obtained in steady state limit. For an ensemble of atoms in the cavity mode, the response of the intra-cavity light intensity to the intersecting resonant beam is understood for stationary atoms (closed system) and non-static atoms (open system). The open system is modelled by adjusting the atomic state populations to represent the exchange of atoms in the cavity mode, with the thermal environment. The solutions to the model are used to qualitatively explain the observed steady state and transient behaviour of the light in the cavity mode, in Sharma et. al. [1]. The control behaviour with three- and two-level atomic systems is also studied, and the rich physics arising out of these systems, for closed and open atomic systems is discussed.
Throughout human history, people have used sight to learn about the world, but only in relatively recent times the science of light has been developed. Egyptians and Mesopotamians made the first known lenses out of quartz, giving birth to what was later known as optics. On the other hand, geometry is a branch of mathematics that was born from practical studies concerning lengths, areas and volumes in the early cultures, although it was not put into axiomatic form until the 3rd century BC. In this work, we will discuss the connection between these two timeless topics and show some "new things in old things". There has been several works in this direction, but taking into account the didactic approach of the Enrico Fermi Summer School, we would like to address the subject and our audience in a new light.
Traditional methods for generating orbital angular momentum (OAM) light include holographic diffraction gratings, vortex phase plate and spatial light modulator. In this article, we report a new method for high efficient OAM light generation. By pumping an external cavity contains a quasi phase matching nonlinear crystal with a fundamental OAM carrying light and properly aligning the cavity, mode matching between the pump light and the cavitys higher order Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) mode is achieved, conversion efficiency up to 10.3 percentage have been obtained. We have demonstrated that the cavity can stably operate at its higher order LG mode just as Gaussian mode for the first time. The SHG light possesses a doubled OAM value with respect to the pump light. The parameters that affect the beam quality and conversion efficiency are discussed in detail. Our work opens a brand new field in laser optics, and makes the first step toward high efficiency OAM light processing.
Nicola Chiodo, Frédéric Du-Burck, Jan Hrabina
et al.
We report on phase-locking of two continuous wave infrared laser sources separated by 100 THz emitting around 1029 nm and 1544 nm respectively. Our approach uses three independent harmonic generation processes of the IR laser frequencies in periodically poled MgO: LiNbO3 crystals to generate second and third harmonic of that two IR sources. The beat note between the two independent green radiations generated around 515 nm is used to phase-lock one IR laser to the other, with tunable radio frequency offset. In this way, the whole setup operates as a mini frequency comb (MFC) emitting four intense optical radiations (1544 nm, 1029 nm, 772 nm and 515 nm), with output powers at least 3 orders of magnitude higher than the available power from each mode emitted by femtosecond lasers.
Due to the recent interest in studying propagation of light through triangular air gaps, we calculate, by using the analogy between optics and quantum mechanics and the multiple step technique, the transmissivity through a triangular air gap surrounded by an homogeneous dielectric medium. The new formula is then compared with the formula used in literature. Starting from the qualitative and quantitative differences between these formulas, we propose optical experiments to test our theoretical results.