In their Nature Photonics paper, Professor Shanhui Fan, graduate student Yu Shi, and alum Zongfu Yu show that, "when a signal is transmitting through, such isolators are constrained by a reciprocity relation for a class of small-amplitude additional waves and, as a result, cannot provide isolation for arbitrary backward-propagating noise. This result points to an important limitation on the use of nonlinear optical isolators for signal processing and for laser protection."
The Stanford News reports, "In previous works, researchers used a specific method to test whether nonlinear isolators on a chip could keep information flowing in the right direction. They would direct a beam of light in the "forward" direction and verify that the isolator would let the light through. Then they would direct a beam of light in the "backward" direction toward the isolator, and verify that the isolator would block that beam. It was not standard practice to test forward and backward beams at the same time."
This finding is important for designing isolators for optical chips. Engineers will need to look elsewhere for devices that can keep optical information flowing in one direction, but not the other.
Read full Stanford News article.
Fan's research involves the theory and simulations of photonic and solid-state materials and devices; photonic crystals; nano-scale photonic devices and plasmonics; quantum optics; computational electromagnetics; parallel scientific computing. View Bio page.
