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Non-hermiticity-driven photonic switching ultrafast routing and robust power transfer Xilin Feng
- Format:
- Book
- Thesis/Dissertation
- Author/Creator:
- Feng, Xilin, author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Electrical engineering.
- Applied physics.
- Quantum physics.
- Optics.
- 0544.
- 0752.
- 0599.
- 0215.
- Local Subjects:
- Electrical engineering.
- Applied physics.
- Quantum physics.
- Optics.
- 0544.
- 0752.
- 0599.
- 0215.
- Genre:
- Academic theses
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (139 pages)
- Contained In:
- Dissertations Abstracts International 87-12B
- Place of Publication:
- Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 2026
- Language Note:
- English
- Summary:
- As the scaling of electronic systems approaches fundamental physical limits, integrated photonics has emerged as a promising platform for high-speed optical interconnects, owing to its intrinsic advantages in speed, bandwidth, and parallelism. A central challenge in integrated photonics lies in achieving fast, compact, broadband, and reconfigurable on-chip light manipulation with high bandwidth density. Conventional reconfigurable photonic approaches, which are typically based on thermo-optic or electro-optic index modulation, microelectromechanical systems, or semiconductor optical amplifiers, often suffer from trade-offs among switching speed, footprint, bandwidth, scalability. Additionally, they are sensitive to fabrication imperfections. This dissertation explores non-Hermitian control as a unified framework for overcoming these limitations in photonic switching. First, by harnessing gain-loss modulation and parity-time symmetry breaking in hybrid III-V/silicon platforms, a new class of non-blocking photonic switching architectures is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The realized switches exhibit sub-nanosecond to picosecond switching times, compact footprints on the order of 85 × 85 μm², and broadband operation exceeding 40 nm. Array-level non-blocking switching and wavelength-selective switching are demonstrated, enabling flexible multi-wavelength routing. Building on this platform, an integrated architecture for reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers is proposed, offering ultrafast, directionally flexible, and scalable wavelength routing. In parallel, this dissertation also investigates reconfigurable and robust photonic routing in topological systems by non-Hermitian control. By introducing a hybridized pseudo-spin-flipping coupling mechanism that occurs across the interface between two topologically identical domains, tunable and robust power transfer between distinct topological domains is realized in two-dimensional photonic insulators through selective optical pumping. This non-Hermitian control enables continuous tuning of power splitting while preserving robustness against geometric disorder. Together, these results establish non-Hermiticity as a powerful design paradigm for integrated photonics, enabling ultrafast, compact, broadband, and robust photonic functionalities, and providing a scalable pathway toward high-performance photonic chips for future optical communication networks and photonic information processing systems
- Notes:
- Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-12, Section: B.
- Advisors: Feng, Liang Committee members: Engheta, Nader; Zhen, Bo; Jariwala, Deep
- Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2026
- Vendor supplied data
- Local Notes:
- School code: 0175
- ISBN:
- 9798247981053
- Access Restriction:
- Restricted for use by site license
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