Engineering Quantum Light Sources with Flat Optics.

Quantum light sources are essential building blocks for many quantum technologies, enabling secure communication, powerful computing, and precise sensing and imaging. Recent advancements have witnessed a significant shift toward the utilization of "flat" optics with thickness at subwavelength scales for the development of quantum light sources. This approach offers notable advantages over conventional bulky counterparts, including compactness, scalability, and improved efficiency, along with added functionalities.

Polarization Engineering of Entangled Photons from a Lithium Niobate Nonlinear Metasurface.

Complex polarization states of photon pairs are indispensable in various quantum technologies. Conventional methods for preparing desired two-photon polarization states are realized through bulky nonlinear crystals, which can restrict the versatility and tunability of the generated quantum states due to the fixed crystal nonlinear susceptibility. Here we present a solution using a nonlinear metasurface incorporating multiplexed silica metagratings on a lithium niobate film of 300 nm thickness.

Spatially entangled photon pairs from lithium niobate nonlocal metasurfaces.

Metasurfaces consisting of nanoscale structures are underpinning new physical principles for the creation and shaping of quantum states of light. Multiphoton states that are entangled in spatial or angular domains are an essential resource for many quantum applications; however, their production traditionally relies on bulky nonlinear crystals. We predict and demonstrate experimentally the generation of spatially entangled photon pairs through spontaneous parametric down-conversion from a metasurface incorporating a nonlinear thin film of lithium niobate covered by a silica meta-grating.

Photothermally induced transparency.

Induced transparency is a common but remarkable effect in optics. It occurs when a strong driving field is used to render an otherwise opaque material transparent. The effect is known as electromagnetically induced transparency in atomic media and optomechanically induced transparency in systems that consist of coupled optical and mechanical resonators.

Controllable chaos in hybrid electro-optomechanical systems.

We investigate the nonlinear dynamics of a hybrid electro-optomechanical system (EOMS) that allows us to realize the controllable opto-mechanical nonlinearity by driving the microwave LC resonator with a tunable electric field. A controllable optical chaos is realized even without changing the optical pumping. The threshold and lifetime of the chaos could be optimized by adjusting the strength, frequency, or phase of the electric field.

PT-Symmetry-Breaking Chaos in Optomechanics.

We demonstrate PT-symmetry-breaking chaos in an optomechanical system, which features an ultralow driving threshold. In principle, this chaos will emerge once a driving laser is applied to the cavity mode and lasts for a period of time. The driving strength is inversely proportional to the starting time of chaos.

Optomechanically induced transparency in the presence of an external time-harmonic-driving force.

We propose a potentially valuable scheme to measure the properties of an external time-harmonic-driving force with frequency ω via investigating its interaction with the combination of a pump field and a probe field in a generic optomechanical system. We show that the spectra of both the cavity field and output field in the configuration of optomechanically induced transparency are greatly modified by such an external force, leading to many interesting linear and non-linear effects, such as the asymmetric structure of absorption in the frequency domain and the antisymmetry breaking of dispersion near ω = ωm. Furthermore, we find that our scheme can be used to measure the initial phase of the external force.

Optomechanically induced transparency in the mechanical-mode splitting regime.

We employ a decoupled Heisenberg-Langevin equation for the observation and physical interpretation of mechanical-mode splitting (MMS) of the movable mirror in a generic optomechanical system. Then we identify some observable and significant features of MMS in a two-mode cavity. That is, the second control field coupled to another optical mode is input to the system to modify the mechanical mode, leading to the suppression of transmission, the appearance of the doublet in the spectrum of the anti-Stokes field, and the emergence of optomechanically induced transparency in corresponding new mechanical modes.