Optical switching apparatus and method using quantum control

Keyu Xia (Inventor), Jason Mark Twamley (Inventor)

    Research output: Patent

    Abstract

    Disclosed herein are optical switching methods & systems, for routing/switching of optical information (particularly quantum information) in an optical network which is a vital component in any large scalable photonic-based information system. Disclosed herein is a scheme to execute all-optical control of the routing/switching of photonic information where, by optically controlling the quantum state of a scatterer coupled to two independent cavity modes, it is possible to modulate the intermode coupling dynamically and fast. This allows all-optical modulation of inter-cavity couplings via the AC Stark effect or via STIRAP control of the scatterer's internal states and it is shown that this can be used to perform all-optical switching and all-optical routing with near unit switching contrast and with high bandwidth. Particularly disclosed is an optical switching system comprising: a first optical input waveguide adapted to support an optical input mode; an input cavity coupled to the optical input mode; a first optical output waveguide adapted to support a first optical output mode; a second optical waveguide output adapted to support a second optical output mode; a coupling cavity adapted to be selectively coupled to the input cavity and the first and the second optical output waveguides; a scatterer adapted to couple the input cavity with the coupling cavity thereby to selectively couple the optical input waveguide with a selected one of the first and second optical output waveguides; wherein, the scatterer is adapted to be manipulated by an optical control field to selectively couple the coupling cavity to the input cavity and thereby selectively couple the input waveguide to a selected one of the first and the second optical output waveguides such that the optical input mode is coupled to the selected one of the first and the second optical output waveguides to provide an optical output on the selected output waveguide.
    Original languageEnglish
    Patent numberWO2014169321
    IPCG02B 6/12 (2006.01),G02B 6/26 (2006.01),G02B 6/35 (2006.01),H01S 3/10 (2006.01)
    Priority date18/04/14
    Filing date8/04/14
    Publication statusPublished - 23 Oct 2014

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