Experimental realization of Bloch oscillations in a parity-time synthetic silicon photonic lattice.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27095533.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms11319 and PMC identifier 4842984.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
As an important electron transportation phenomenon, Bloch oscillations have been extensively studied in condensed matter. Due to the similarity in wave properties between electrons and other quantum particles, Bloch oscillations have been observed in atom lattices, photonic lattices, and so on. One of the many distinct advantages for choosing these systems over the regular electronic systems is the versatility in engineering artificial potentials. Here by utilizing dissipative elements in a CMOS-compatible photonic platform to create a periodic complex potential and by exploiting the emerging concept of parity-time synthetic photonics, we experimentally realize spatial Bloch oscillations in a non-Hermitian photonic system on a chip level. Our demonstration may have significant impact in the field of quantum simulation by following the recent trend of moving complicated table-top quantum optics experiments onto the fully integrated CMOS-compatible silicon platform.