2016/01/04 by A. C. Mahoney, Alice Mahoney, J. I. Colless +13 · 6 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Bandwidth (computing) #Chip #Circulator #Computer science #Electrical engineering #Engineering #Full-Duplex Wireless Communications #Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications #Microwave #Optical circulator #Optics #Optoelectronics #Physics #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum mechanics #Radar #Radio frequency #Reciprocity (cultural anthropology) #Telecommunications #Wavelength #cond-mat.mes-hall #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevx.7.011007
published as Phys. Rev. X 7, 011007 (2017)
arxiv created 2016/01/04 · openalex publication_date 2017/01/24 · arxiv updated 2017/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Circulators are nonreciprocal circuit elements that are integral to technologies including radar systems, microwave communication transceivers, and the readout of quantum information devices. Their nonreciprocity arises from the interference of microwaves over the centimeter scale of the signal wavelength, in the presence of bulky magnetic media that breaks time-reversal symmetry. Here, we realize a completely passive on-chip microwave circulator with size 1=1000th the wavelength by exploiting the chiral, "slow-light" response of a two-dimensional electron gas in the quantum Hall regime. For an integrated GaAs device with 330 m diameter and about 1-GHz center frequency, a nonreciprocity of 25 dB is observed over a 50-MHz bandwidth. Furthermore, the nonreciprocity can be dynamically tuned by varying the voltage at the port, an aspect that may enable reconfigurable passive routing of microwave signals on chip.