Observation of supersymmetric scattering in photonic lattices

Abstract

Supersymmetric (SUSY) optical structures display a number of intriguing properties that can lead to a variety of potential applications, ranging from perfect global phase matching to highly efficient mode conversion and novel multiplexing schemes. Here, we experimentally investigate the scattering characteristics of SUSY photonic lattices. We directly observe the light dynamics in such systems and compare the reflection/transmission properties of SUSY partner structures. In doing so, we demonstrate that discrete settings constitute a promising testbed for studying the different facets of optical supersymmetry.

Beam splitter and combiner based on Bloch oscillation in a spatially modulated waveguide array

“…waveguides arrays inventively would lead to other interesting optical phenomena [29][30][31][32]. It is worth mentioning that such phenomena associated with periodic systems can be used to emulate the quantum events [10,[33][34][35][36][37].…”

Topological state engineering via supersymmetric transformations

“…In recent years, the field of photonics has shed light on a plethora of phenomena stemming from topological phases (See [15,16] and references therein), and photonic lattices have been established as a versatile experimental platform [17][18][19][20]. In a similar vein, SUSY notions have been introduced to photonics [8] to tackle the long-standing challenge of systematically shaping the modal content of highly multi-moded structures [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28], controlling scattering characteristics [29][30][31], designing laser arrays [32,33], creating band gaps in extremely disordered potentials [34] and robust mid-gap states [35]. To elucidate how SUSY enables the manipulation of topological properties, we apply discrete SUSY transformations to photonic lattices embodying the simplest system with non-trivial topological properties, the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model [36].…”

Supersymmetric transparent optical intersections

“…SUSY optical structures also enable to realize transparent defects and interfaces [12][13][14]. As compared to TO methods, SUSY shows less stringent requirements of material parameters [8,9] and can be applied to discretized light in coupled waveguide or resonator structures as well [11,12,15].…”

“…4(b) and 4(c), showing a strong oscillating behavior with large backreflectance for nearly step-index profile. SUSY can also offer the possibility to design transparent intersections for discretized light [12,15]. Let us consider, as an example, a square lattice of coupled resonators [29] with the same resonance frequency ω R and with nonuniform hopping rates, as schematically shown in Fig.…”