Motoki Asano

Distillation of photon entanglement using a plasmonic metamaterial

Plasmonics is a rapidly emerging platform for quantum state engineering with the potential for building ultra-compact and hybrid optoelectronic devices. Recent experiments have shown that despite the presence of decoherence and loss, photon statistics and entanglement can be preserved in single plasmonic systems. This preserving ability should carry over to plasmonic metamaterials, whose properties are the result of many individual plasmonic systems acting collectively, and can be used to engineer optical states of light. Here, we report an experimental demonstration of quantum state filtering, also known as entanglement distillation, using a metamaterial. We show that the metamaterial can be used to distill highly entangled states from less entangled states. As the metamaterial can be integrated with other optical components this work opens up the intriguing possibility of incorporating plasmonic metamaterials in on-chip quantum state engineering tasks.

Stimulated Brillouin scattering and Brillouin-coupled four-wave-mixing in a silica microbottle resonator

We report the first observation of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) with Brillouin lasing, and Brillouin-coupled four-wave-mixing (FWM) in an ultra-high-Q silica microbottle resonator. The Brillouin lasing was observed at the frequency of ΩB = 2π × 10.4 GHz with a threshold power of 0.45 mW. Coupling between Brillouin and FWM was observed in both backward and forward scattering directions with separations of 2ΩB. At a pump power of 10 mW, FWM spacing reached to 7th and 9th order anti-Stokes and Stokes, respectively.

Controlling slow and fast light and dynamic pulse-splitting with tunable optical gain in a whispering-gallery-mode microcavity

We report controllable manipulation of slow and fast light in a whispering-gallery-mode microtoroid resonator fabricated from Erbium (Er3+) doped silica. We observe continuous transition of the coupling between the fiber-taper waveguide and the microresonator from undercoupling to critical coupling and then to overcoupling regimes by increasing the pump power even though the spatial distance between the resonator and the waveguide was kept fixed. This, in turn, enables switching from fast to slow light and vice versa just by increasing the optical gain. An enhancement of delay of two-fold over the passive silica resonator (no optical gain) was observed in the slow light regime. Moreover, we show dynamic pulse splitting and its control in slow/fast light systems using optical gain.

Anomalous time delays and quantum weak measurements in optical micro-resonators

Quantum weak measurements, wavepacket shifts and optical vortices are universal wave phenomena, which originate from fine interference of multiple plane waves. These effects have attracted considerable attention in both classical and quantum wave systems. Here we report on a phenomenon that brings together all the above topics in a simple one-dimensional scalar wave system. We consider inelastic scattering of Gaussian wave packets with parameters close to a zero of the complex scattering coefficient. We demonstrate that the scattered wave packets experience anomalously large time and frequency shifts in such near-zero scattering. These shifts reveal close analogies with the Goos–Hänchen beam shifts and quantum weak measurements of the momentum in a vortex wavefunction. We verify our general theory by an optical experiment using the near-zero transmission (near-critical coupling) of Gaussian pulses propagating through a nano-fibre with a side-coupled toroidal micro-resonator. Measurements demonstrate the amplification of the time delays from the typical inverse-resonator-linewidth scale to the pulse-duration scale.

Visible light emission from a silica microbottle resonator by second- and third-harmonic generation

We report the first observation of nonlinear harmonic generation and sum frequency generation (SFG) coupled with stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) via the second-order (χ(2)) and the third-order (χ(3)) nonlinearities in a silica microbottle resonator. The visible light emission due to third-harmonic generation (THG) was observed in both the output of a tapered fiber and the optical microscope images, which can be used to identify the axial mode profiles. SFG enabled by three- and four-wave mixing processes between the pump light and the light generated via SRS was also observed. Second-harmonic generation (SHG) and the SFG are enabled by χ(2) induced in silica by surface effects and multipole excitations.

An opto-electro-mechanical system based on evanescently-coupled optical microbottle and electromechanical resonator

Evanescent coupling between a silica optical microbottle resonator and a GaAs electromechanical resonator is demonstrated. This coupling provides high optical sensitivity and efficient piezoelectric controllability of mechanical motion. Opto-electro-mechanical feedback control based on optomechanical detection and electromechanical control is performed in both heating and cooling regimes at room temperature. This feedback scheme can be extended to the efficient control of thermal mechanical motion in electromechanical resonators with arbitrary structures and materials.

Analytical investigation of optical vortices emitted from a collectively polarized dipole array

Many approaches for producing optical vortices have been developed both for fundamental interests of science and for engineering applications. In particular, the approach with direct excitation of several emitters has a potential to control the topological charges with a control of the source conditions without any modifications of structures of the system. In this paper, we investigate the propagation properties of the optical vortices emitted from a collectively polarized electric dipole array as a simple model of the several emitters. Using an analytical approach based on the Jacobi-Anger expansion, we derive a relationship between the topological charge of the optical vortices and the source conditions of the emitter, and clarify and report our new finding; there exists an intrinsic split of the singular points in the electric field due to the spin-orbit interaction of the dipole fields.

Frequency comb generation in a quadratic nonlinear waveguide resonator

Enhancement of a nonlinear optical interaction through waveguides or resonators disclose unconventional interplay among multiple lights. Microresonator-based optical frequency comb (OFC) generation via third order nonlinearity is a typical example of such enhancements. Recently, quadratic-nonlinearity-based OFC with an external cavity configuration has been found and its on-chip implementation is highly demanded. Here we for the first time demonstrate such an on-chip OFC with a quadratic nonlinear waveguide resonator. Furthermore, we controlled the comb spectra separation by adjusting frequency difference of two pump light. This on-chip quadratic device will be useful for not only metrologies but also integrated quantum information technologies.