《“Nonreciprocal Light Propagation in a Silicon Photonic Circuit” 》.pdf

Comment to “Nonreciprocal Light Propagation in a Silicon Photonic Circuit” 1,2* 3,4 5 6 Roel Baets , Wolfgang Freude , Andrea Melloni , Miloš Popović , Mathias Vanwolleghem7,8 1Photonics Research Group, INTEC-department, Ghent University-IMEC, B-9000 Gent, Belgium 2Center for Nano- and Biophotonics, Ghent University, B-9000 Gent, Belgium 3Inst. of Photonics and Quantum Electronics (IPQ), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany 4Institute of Microstructure Technology (IMT), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany 5Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, 20133 Milano, Italy 6Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA 7Univ. Paris-Sud, Institut dElectronique Fondamentale, UMR8622, Orsay, F-91405, France 8CNRS, Orsay, F-91405, France * To whom correspondence should be addressed: roel.baets@ugent.be Abstract In the article “Nonreciprocal Light Propagation in a Silicon Photonic Circuit” (Science 333, 729-733 (2011) a nonreciprocal waveguide system based on a combination of silicon, dielectrics and metals is reported. In this Comment it is explained that the interpretation with respect to nonreciprocity in this paper is incorrect and conflicts with the fundament al Lorentz reciprocity theorem. It is further pointed out that a previous publication already introduced the device concept. In the article “Nonreciprocal Light Propagation in a Silicon Photonic Circuit” by Liang Feng and co- workers [1] a silicon waveguide with a periodic perturbation consisting of dielectrics and metals is analyzed numerically, fabricated and tested. It is claimed that this device has nonreciprocal light transmission properties. This is assumed to be due