2019/11/24 by Hamidreza Chalabi, Sabyasachi Barik, Chalabi, Hamidreza +9 · 2 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Applied Physics (physics.app-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Optical Network Technologies #Optics (physics.optics) #Photonic and Optical Devices #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Quantum optics and atomic interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1911.10446
openalex publication_date 2019/11/24 · openalex created_date 2019/12/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Synthetic dimensions provide a promising platform for photonic quantum simulations. Manipulating the flow of photons in these dimensions requires an electric field. However, photons do not have charge and do not directly interact with electric fields. Therefore, alternative approaches are needed to realize electric fields in photonics. One approach is to use engineered gauge fields that can mimic the effect of electric fields and produce the same dynamical behavior. Here, we demonstrate such an electric field for photons propagating in a two-dimensional synthetic space. We achieve this using a linearly time-varying gauge field generated by direction-dependent phase modulations. We show that the generated electric field leads to Bloch oscillations and the revival of the state after a certain number of steps dependent on the field strength. We measure the probability of the revival and demonstrate good agreement between the observed values and the theoretically predicted results. Furthermore, by applying a nonuniform electric field, we show the possibility of waveguiding photons. Ultimately, our results open up new opportunities for manipulating the propagation of photons with potential applications in photonic quantum simulations.