Field-programmable silicon temporal cloak

Temporal cloaks have aroused tremendous research interest in both optical physics and optical communications, unfolding a distinct approach to conceal temporal events from an interrogating optical field. The state-of-the-art temporal cloaks exhibit picosecond-scale and static cloaking window, owing to significantly limited periodicity and aperture of time lens.

Here we demonstrate a field-programmable silicon temporal cloak for hiding nanosecond-level events, enabled by an integrated silicon microring and a broadband optical frequency comb. With dynamic control of the driving electrical signals on the microring, our cloaking windows could be stretched and switched in real time from 0.449 ns to 3.365 ns.

Such a field-programmable temporal cloak may exhibit practically meaningful potentials in secure communication, data compression, and information protection in dynamically varying events.