Programmable on-chip synthesis and reconstruction of partially coherent two-mode optical fields

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hashemi, Amin, Shiri, Abbas, Saleh, Bahaa E. A., Blanco-Redondo, Andrea, Abouraddy, Ayman F.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Hashemi, Amin
Shiri, Abbas
Saleh, Bahaa E. A.
Blanco-Redondo, Andrea
Abouraddy, Ayman F.
author_facet Hashemi, Amin
Shiri, Abbas
Saleh, Bahaa E. A.
Blanco-Redondo, Andrea
Abouraddy, Ayman F.
contents Partially coherent light is typically studied in the context of freely propagating continuous fields. Recent developments have indicated the existence of a `coherence advantage' in multimode optical communications, where partially coherent light outperforms coherent light. However, exploiting partial coherence in such applications requires manipulating multimode field coherence in programmable on-chip platforms. We present here the first example of on-chip synthesis and characterization of two-mode optical fields in an integrated on-chip hexagonal mesh of Mach-Zehnder interferometers. Starting with incoherent two-mode light, we adjust the degree of coherence on the chip with non-unitary transformations, construct $2\times2$ unitary transformations to synthesize prescribed coherence matrices, and reconstruct the coherence matrices via measurements of the spatial Stokes parameters. These results indicate the possibility of deploying programmable photonics for producing large-dimensional structured partially coherent light for applications in communications, cryptography, sensing, and spectroscopy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_09802
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Programmable on-chip synthesis and reconstruction of partially coherent two-mode optical fields
Hashemi, Amin
Shiri, Abbas
Saleh, Bahaa E. A.
Blanco-Redondo, Andrea
Abouraddy, Ayman F.
Optics
Partially coherent light is typically studied in the context of freely propagating continuous fields. Recent developments have indicated the existence of a `coherence advantage' in multimode optical communications, where partially coherent light outperforms coherent light. However, exploiting partial coherence in such applications requires manipulating multimode field coherence in programmable on-chip platforms. We present here the first example of on-chip synthesis and characterization of two-mode optical fields in an integrated on-chip hexagonal mesh of Mach-Zehnder interferometers. Starting with incoherent two-mode light, we adjust the degree of coherence on the chip with non-unitary transformations, construct $2\times2$ unitary transformations to synthesize prescribed coherence matrices, and reconstruct the coherence matrices via measurements of the spatial Stokes parameters. These results indicate the possibility of deploying programmable photonics for producing large-dimensional structured partially coherent light for applications in communications, cryptography, sensing, and spectroscopy.
title Programmable on-chip synthesis and reconstruction of partially coherent two-mode optical fields
topic Optics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.09802