Polarization-controlled chiral transport

Abstract

Handedness-selective chiral transport is an intriguing phenomenon that not only holds significant importance for fundamental research but also carries application prospects in fields such as optical communications and sensing. Currently, on-chip chiral transport devices are static, unable to modulate the output modes based on the input modes. This limits both device functionality reconfiguration and information transmission capacity. Here, we propose to use the incident polarization diversity to control the Hamiltonian evolution path, achieving polarization-dependent chiral transport. By mapping the evolution path of TE and TM polarizations onto elaborately engineered double-coupled waveguides, we experimentally demonstrate that different polarizations yield controllable modal outputs. This work combines Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output, and polarization diversity concepts with chiral transport and challenges the prevailing notion that the modal outputs are fixed to specific modes in chiral transport, thereby opening pathways for the development of on-chip reconfigurable and high-capacity handedness-selective devices.