Photonic Supercoupling in Silicon Topological Waveguides

Waveguide interconnect coupling control is essential for enhancing the chip density of photonic integrated circuits to incorporate a growing number of components. However, a critical engineering challenge is to achieve both strong waveguide isolation and efficient long-range coupling on a single chip. Here, a novel photonic supercoupling phenomenon is demonstrated for waveguide coupling over separation distances from a quarter to five wavelengths (lambda), leveraging the tunable mode tails and the vortex energy flow in topological valley Hall system. A supercoupled integrated chip is developed, realizing a 91% coupling ratio and a -30 dB isolation over 2.8 lambda waveguide separations simultaneously. Supercoupled devices are further showcased including a waveguide-cavity system with 3.2 lambda excitation distance, and a waveguide directional supercoupler with a compact coupling area of nearly lambda 2/4, which outperform conventional devices. Supercoupling provides new degrees of freedom for optimizing coupling and isolation between photonic integrated components, facilitating new applications in on-chip sensing, lasing, and telecommunications.