Breaking FOV-Aperture Trade-Off With Multi-Mode Nano-Photonic Antennas

Nano-photonic antennas are one of the key components in integrated photonic transmitter and receiver systems. Conventionally, grating couplers, designed to couple into an optical fiber, suffering from limitations such as large footprint small field-of-view (FOV) have been used on-chip antennas. The challenge antenna design is more pronounced for systems, where both collected power by its FOV often need be maximized. While some novel solutions demonstrated recently, identifying fundamental limits trade-offs nano-photonic essential devising compact structures with improved performance. In this paper, electromagnetic limits, well fabrication imposed constraints on improving effective aperture studied, approximated performance upper derived quantified. By deviating conventional assumptions leading these high-performance multi-mode characteristics beyond perceived demonstrated. Finally, application a pillar dense array discussed, than 95% collection efficiency 170 $^\circ$ demonstrated, coherent receiving system utilizing presented.