Fingernail-Sized Chip Untangles Mixed Light Into Clean Beams

Photonic chip splits mixed light into 3 modes for sharper imaging

A photonic chip separates partially coherent light into distinct modes, potentially revealing hidden information for cameras, microscopes and telescopes.

Fingernail-sized chip untangles mixed light into clean beams

Stanford engineers and colleagues designed a chip that can take a muddled mixture of light from multiple lasers and output clean beams of light. It's the first time researchers have demonstrated a device that can take in mixed, or partially coherent, light and sort its photons into a clear set of separate beams.

New Stanford-built optical chip ‘recycles’ light for faster computing and satellite communication

A silicon chip learns hidden patterns in partially coherent light and routes them to separate outputs, pointing toward new imaging and communication tools.

Photonic Chip Learns to Split Partially Coherent Light Into Its Incoherent

A self-configuring silicon photonic circuit automatically separates partially coherent light into its orthogonal, mutually incoherent coherence modes, with hardware that scales linearly with mode rank.