Duk-Yong Choi

Ultrafast all-optical chalcogenide glass photonic circuits

Chalcogenide glasses offer large ultrafast third-order nonlinearities, combined with low two-photon absorption and absence of free carrier absorption in a photosensitivity medium. We review the key properties of these materials, including the strong photosensitivity and focus on several recent demonstrations of ultra-fast all-optical signal processing: optical time division multiplexing, all-optical signal regeneration and wavelength conversion.

Supercontinuum generation in dispersion engineered highly nonlinear (y=10/W/m) As2S3 chalcogenide planar waveguide

We demonstrate supercontinuum generation in a highly nonlinear As(2)S(3) chalcogenide planar waveguide which is dispersion engineered to have anomalous dispersion at near-infrared wavelengths. This waveguide is 60 mm long with a cross-section of 2 mum by 870 nm, resulting in a nonlinear parameter of 10 /W/m and a dispersion of +29 ps/nm/km. Using pulses with a width of 610 fs and peak power of 68 W, we generate supercontinuum with a 30 dB bandwidth of 750 nm, in good agreement with theory.

Long, low loss etched As(2)S(3) chalcogenide waveguides for all-optical signal regeneration.

We report on the fabrication and optical properties of etched highly nonlinear As(2)S(3) chalcogenide planar rib waveguides with lengths up to 22.5 cm and optical losses as low as 0.05 dB/cm at 1550 nm - the lowest ever reported. We demonstrate strong spectral broadening of 1.2 ps pulses, in good agreement with simulations, and find that the ratio of nonlinearity and dispersion linearizes the pulse chirp, reducing the spectral oscillations caused by self-phase modulation alone. When combined with a spectrally offset band-pass filter, this gives rise to a nonlinear transfer function suitable for all-optical regeneration of high data rate signals.

Producing air-stable monolayers of phosphorene and their defect engineering

It has been a long-standing challenge to produce air-stable few- or monolayer samples of phosphorene because thin phosphorene films degrade rapidly in ambient conditions. Here we demonstrate a new highly controllable method for fabricating high quality, air-stable phosphorene films with a designated number of layers ranging from a few down to monolayer. Our approach involves the use of oxygen plasma dry etching to thin down thick-exfoliated phosphorene flakes, layer by layer with atomic precision. Moreover, in a stabilized phosphorene monolayer, we were able to precisely engineer defects for the first time, which led to efficient emission of photons at new frequencies in the near infrared at room temperature. In addition, we demonstrate the use of an electrostatic gate to tune the photon emission from the defects in a monolayer phosphorene. This could lead to new electronic and optoelectronic devices, such as electrically tunable, broadband near infrared lighting devices operating at room temperature.

Breakthrough switching speed with an all-optical chalcogenide glass chip: 640 Gbit/s demultiplexing

We report the first demonstration of error-free 640 Gbit/s demultiplexing using the Kerr non-linearity of an only 5 cm long chalcogenide glass waveguide chip. Our approach exploits four-wave mixing by the instantaneous nonlinear response of chalcogenide. Excellent performance is achieved with only 2 dB average power penalty and no indication of error-floor. Characterisation of the FWM efficiency for the chalcogenide waveguide is given and confirms the good performance of the device.

Ultrafast All-Optical Switching with Magnetic Resonances in Nonlinear Dielectric Nanostructures

We demonstrate experimentally ultrafast all-optical switching in subwavelength nonlinear dielectric nanostructures exhibiting localized magnetic Mie resonances. We employ amorphous silicon nanodisks to achieve strong self-modulation of femtosecond pulses with a depth of 60% at picojoule-per-disk pump energies. In the pump-probe measurements, we reveal that switching in the nanodisks can be governed by pulse-limited 65 fs-long two-photon absorption being enhanced by a factor of 80 with respect to the unstructured silicon film. We also show that undesirable free-carrier effects can be suppressed by a proper spectral positioning of the magnetic resonance, making such a structure the fastest all-optical switch operating at the nanoscale.

Applications of Highly-Nonlinear Chalcogenide Glass Devices Tailored for High-Speed All-Optical Signal Processing

Ultrahigh nonlinear tapered fiber and planar rib Chalcogenide waveguides have been developed to enable highspeed all-optical signal processing in compact, low-loss optical devices through the use of four-wave mixing (FWM) and cross-phase modulation (XPM) via the ultra fast Kerr effect. Tapering a commercial As2Se3 fiber is shown to reduce its effective core area and enhance the Kerr nonlinearity thereby enabling XPM wavelength conversion of a 40 Gb/s signal in a shorter 16-cm length device that allows a broader wavelength tuning range due to its smaller net chromatic dispersion. Progress toward photonic chip-scale devices is shown by fabricating As2S3 planar rib waveguides exhibiting nonlinearity up to 2080 W-1ldr km-1 and losses as low as 0.05 dB/cm. The materials high refractive index, ensuring more robust confinement of the optical mode, permits a more compact serpentine-shaped rib waveguide of 22.5 cm length on a 7-cm- size chip, which is successfully applied to broadband wavelength conversion of 40-80 Gb/s signals by XPM. A shorter 5-cm length planar waveguide proves most effective for all-optical time-division demultiplexing of a 160 Gb/s signal by FWM and analysis shows its length is near optimum for maximizing FWM in consideration of its dispersion and loss.

Mid-infrared supercontinuum generation in chalcogenides

Yi Yu acknowledges the financial support from the China Scholarship Council for her PhD Scholarship No. 201206110048. This research was conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (project number CE110001018). Dr Zhiyong Yang is supported by ARC DECRA project DE120101036 and Dr Duk-Yong Choi by ARC Future Fellowship FT110100853.

Progress in optical waveguides fabricated from chalcogenide glasses

We review the fabrication processes and properties of waveguides that have been made from chalcogenide glasses including highly nonlinear waveguides developed for all-optical processing.

Aluminum Plasmonics Based Highly Transmissive Polarization-Independent Subtractive Color Filters Exploiting a Nanopatch Array

Nanophotonic devices enabled by aluminum plasmonics are saliently advantageous in terms of their low cost, outstanding sustainability, and affordable volume production. We report, for the first time, aluminum plasmonics based highly transmissive polarization-independent subtractive color filters, which are fabricated just with single step electron-beam lithography. The filters feature selective suppression in the transmission spectra, which is realized by combining the propagating and nonpropagating surface plasmons mediated by an array of opaque and physically thin aluminum nanopatches. A broad palette of bright, high-contrast subtractive colors is successfully demonstrated by simply varying the pitches of the nanopatches. These subtractive color filters have twice the photon throughput of additive counterparts, ultimately providing elevated optical transmission and thus stronger color signals. Moreover, the filters are demonstrated to conspicuously feature a dual-mode operation, both transmissive and reflective, in conjunction with a capability to exhibit micron-scale colors in arbitrary shapes. They are anticipated to be diversely applied to digital display, digital imaging, color printing, and sensing.