On-chip twisted light emitters are essential components of orbital angular momentum (OAM) communication devices1, 2. These devices address the growing demand for high-capacity communication systems by providing an additional degree of freedom for wavelength/frequency division multiplexing (WDM/FDM). Although whispering-gallery-mode-enabled OAM emitters have been shown to possess some advantages3, 4, 5, such as compactness and phase accuracy, their inherent narrow bandwidths prevent them from being compatible with WDM/FDM techniques. Here, we demonstrate an ultra-broadband multiplexed OAM emitter that utilizes a novel joint path-resonance phase control concept. The emitter has a micron-sized radius and nanometer-sized features. Coaxial OAM beams are emitted across the entire telecommunication band from 1,450 to 1,650 nm. We applied the emitter to an OAM communication with a data rate of 1.2 Tbit/s assisted by 30-channel optical frequency combs (OFCs). The emitter provides a new solution to further increase capacity in the OFC communication scenario.

The photonic spin Hall effect plays an important role in photonic information technologies, especially in on-chip spin Hall devices. However, conventional devices suffer from low efficiency or narrow bandwidth, which prevents their practical application. Here, we introduce a spin Hall device using inverse design to achieve both high efficiency and broadband. Spin-dependent light separation is enabled by a 2.4 μm circular device with 100 nm pixels. The photonic spin Hall element is fabricated on a silicon-on-insulator wafer compatible with a standard integrated photonic circuit. The spin light is detected and emitted with an efficiency of up to 22% and 35%, respectively, over a 200 nm bandwidth at optical wavelength.

Based on restricted interferences mechanism in a 1x2 MMI beam splitter, we theoretically investigate and experimentally demonstrate an ultra-compact MMI-based demultiplexer for the NIR/MIR wavelengths of 1.55 μm and 2 μm. The device is fabricated on 340 nm SOI platform, with a footprint of 293x6 μm 2 . It exhibits extremely low insertion losses of 0.14 dB and 1.2 dB at the wavelengths of 1.55 μm and 2 μm, respectively, with contrasts of approximately 20 dB for both wavelengths, and a cross-talk of 18.83 dB.

In recent years, the 2 µm waveband has been gaining significant attention due to its potential in the realization of several key technologies, specifically, future long-haul optical communications near the 1.9 µm wavelength region. In this work, we present a hybrid silicon photonic wavelength-tunable diode laser with an operating range of 1881-1947 nm (66 nm) for the first time, providing good compatibility with the hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber and thulium-doped fiber amplifier. Room-temperature continuous-wave operation was achieved with a favorable on-chip output power of 28 mW. Stable single-mode lasing was observed with side-mode suppression ratio up to 35 dB. Besides the abovementioned potential applications, the demonstrated wavelength region will find critical purpose in H 2 O spectroscopic sensing, optical logic, signal processing as well as enabling the strong optical Kerr effect on Si.

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