Experimental Design and Implementation of Two Dimensional Transformations of Light in Waveguides and Polarization

Abstract

Photonics, the technological field that encompasses all aspects of light, has been rapidly growing and increasingly useful in uncovering fundamental truths about nature. It has helped detect gravitational waves, allowed for a direct measurement of the quantum wave function, and has helped realize the coldest temperatures in the universe. But photonics has also had an enormous impact on day-to-day life as well; it has enabled high capacity and/or high speed telecommunication, offered cancer treatment solutions, and has completely revolutionized display and scanning technology. All of these discoveries and applications have required a superb understanding of light, but also a high degree of control over the sometimes abstract properties of light. The work contained in this thesis explores two novel means of controlling and manipulating two different abstract properties of light. In Part I, the property under investigation is the polarization state of light – a property that is paramount to all light-matter interactions, and even some light-light interactions such as interference. Here, a liquid crystal on silicon spatial light modulator (LCOS-SLM)’s capabilities in manipulating the polarization state of light is theoretically examined and experimentally exploited, tested, and reported on. It is found through experimentation that, for an appropriate range of beam sizes and input polarizations, a single LCOS-SLM can be used to produce any light field with an arbitrary, spatially varying polarization profile. In Part II, the property under investigation loosely corresponds to light’s spatial degree of freedom – how light can move from one spot in space to another in a non-trivial manner. Here, control over light’s position through a waveguide array through the use of quantum geometric phase is theoretically examined, simulated, and experimentally designed. It is found through simulation that a threewaveguide array is capable of implementing two dimensional unitary transformations. The common theme between Part I and Part II is manipulating these properties of light to realize classes of general transformations. Moreover, if the light field is treated as a quantum state in the basis of either property under investigation, a two dimensional computational basis ensues. This is precisely the right cardinality for applications in quantum information.