On-chip photonic Fourier transform with surface plasmon polaritons

Kou, Shanshan; Yuan, G; Wang, Q; Du, L; Balaur, Eugeniu; Zhang, D; Tang, D; Abbey, Brian; Yuan, X-C; Lin, J

doi:10.26181/22329832.v1

On-chip photonic Fourier transform with surface plasmon polaritons

journal contribution

posted on 2023-03-24, 03:40 authored by Shanshan KouShanshan Kou, G Yuan, Q Wang, L Du, Eugeniu BalaurEugeniu Balaur, D Zhang, D Tang, Brian AbbeyBrian Abbey, X-C Yuan, J Lin

The Fourier transform (FT), a cornerstone of optical processing, enables rapid evaluation of fundamental mathematical operations, such as derivatives and integrals. Conventionally, a converging lens performs an optical FT in free space when light passes through it. The speed of the transformation is limited by the thickness and the focal length of the lens. By using the wave nature of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), here we demonstrate that the FT can be implemented in a planar configuration with a minimal propagation distance of around 10 mm, resulting in an increase of speed by four to five orders of magnitude. The photonic FT was tested by synthesizing intricate SPP waves with their Fourier components. The reduced dimensionality in the minuscule device allows the future development of an ultrafast on-chip photonic information processing platform for large-scale optical computing.

Funding

This work is partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China 61427819 and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China under National Basic Research Program of China (973) grant (No. 2015CB352004). The preparation of samples was performed in part at the Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication (MCN) in the Victorian Node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF). S.S.K. and J.L. are recipients of the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award funded by the Australian Research Council under projects DE120102352 and DE130100954, respectively. S.S.K. acknowledges the financial support from the La Trobe Research Focus Area (RFA) of Understanding Diseases, the Melbourne Collaboration Grant and the Interdisciplinary Seed Fund through the Melbourne Materials Institute (MMI). J.L. acknowledges the financial support from the Defence Science Institute, Australia. G.H.Y. acknowledges the Advanced Optics in Engineering Programme with Grant number 122-360-0009 from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (ASTAR) and Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 3 with Grant number MOE2011-T3-1-005. Q.W. acknowledges the fellowship support from the ASTAR.

History

Publication Date

2016-01-01

Journal

Light: Science and Applications

Volume

5

Issue

2

Article Number

e16034

Pagination

6p. (p. 1-6)

Publisher

Nature Publishing Group

ISSN

2047-7538

Rights Statement

© 2016 The Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.