Inverse design focuses on identifying photonic structures to optimize the performance of photonic devices. Conventional scalar-based inverse design approaches are insufficient to design photonic devices of anisotropic materials such as lithium niobate (LN). To the best of our knowledge, this work proposes for the first time the inverse design method for anisotropic materials to optimize the structure of anisotropic-material based photonics devices. Specifically, the orientation dependent properties of anisotropic materials are included in the adjoint method, which provides a more precise prediction of light propagation within such materials. The proposed method is used to design ultra-compact wavelength division demultiplexers in the X-cut thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) platform. By benchmarking the device performances of our method with those of classical scalar-based inverse design, we demonstrate that this method properly addresses the critical issue of material anisotropy in the X-cut TFLN platform. This proposed method fills the gap of inverse design of anisotropic materials based photonic devices, which finds prominent applications in TFLN platforms and other anisotropic-material based photonic integration platforms.

This work experimentally and theoretically demonstrates the effect of excited state lasing on the reflection sensitivity of dual-state quantum dot lasers, showing that the laser exhibits higher sensitivity to external optical feedback when reaching the excited state lasing threshold. This sensitivity can be degraded by increasing the excited-to-ground-state energy separation, which results in a high excited-to-ground-state threshold ratio. In addition, the occurrence of excited state lasing decreases the damping factor and increases the linewidth enhancement factor, which leads to a low critical feedback level. These findings illuminate a path to fabricate reflection-insensitive quantum dot lasers for isolator-free photonic integrated circuits.

Silicon has been the material of choice of the photonics industry over the last decade due to its easy integration with silicon electronics, high index contrast, small footprint, and low cost, as well as its optical transparency in the near-infrared and parts of mid-infrared (MIR) wavelengths (from 1.1 to 8 μm). While considerations of micro- and nano-fabrication-induced device parameter deviations and a higher-than-desirable propagation loss still serve as a bottleneck in many on-chip data communication applications, applications as sensors do not require similar stringent controls. Photonic devices on chips are increasingly being demonstrated for chemical and biological sensing with performance metrics rivaling benchtop instruments and thus promising the potential of portable, handheld, and wearable monitoring of various chemical and biological analytes. In this paper, we review recent advances in MIR silicon photonics research. We discuss the pros and cons of various platforms, the fabrication procedures for building such platforms, and the benchmarks demonstrated so far, together with their applications. Novel device architectures and improved fabrication techniques have paved a viable way for realizing low-cost, high-density, multi-function integrated devices in the MIR. These advances are expected to benefit several application domains in the years to come, including communication networks, sensing, and nonlinear systems.

A mode transformer based on the quasi-vertical taper is designed to enable high coupling efficiency for interboardlevel optical interconnects involving single-mode polymer waveguides and standard single-mode fibers. A triangular region fabricated above the waveguide is adopted to adiabatically transform the mode from the fiber into the polymer waveguide. The effects of the geometrical parameters of the taper, including width, height, tip width, etc., on the coupling efficiency are numerically investigated. Based on this, a quasi-vertical taper for the polymer rib waveguide system is designed, fabricated, and characterized. Coupling losses of 1.79 _ 0.30 and 2.23 _ 0.31 dB per coupler for the quasi-TM and quasi-TE mode, respectively, are measured across the optical communication C and L bands (1535 to 1610 nm). Low-cost packaging, leading to widespread utilization of polymeric photonic devices, is envisioned for optical interconnect applications.