Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) based on entanglement can directly transmit confidential information. However, the inability to simultaneously distinguish the four sets of encoded entangled states limits its practical application. Here, we explore a QSDC network based on time–energy entanglement and sum-frequency generation. In total,15 users are in a fully connected QSDC network, and the fidelity of the entangled state shared by any two users is >97%. The results show that when any two users are performing QSDC over 40 km of optical fiber, the fidelity of the entangled state shared by them is still >95%, and the rate of information transmission can be maintained above 1 Kbp/s. Our result demonstrates the feasibility of a proposed QSDC network and hence lays the foundation for the realization of satellite-based long-distance and global QSDC in the future.

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) has demonstrated great success in the optical communication field, which theoretically allows an infinite increase of the transmitted capacity. The resolution of a receiver to precisely recognize OAM modes is crucial to expand the communication capacity. Here, we propose a deep learning (DL) method to precisely recognize OAM modes with fractional topological charges. The minimum interval recognized between adjacent modes decreases to 0.01, which as far as we know is the first time this superhigh resolution has been realized. To exhibit its efficiency in the optical communication process, we transfer an Einstein portrait by a superhigh-resolution OAM multiplexing system. As the convolutional neuron networks can be trained by data up to an infinitely large volume in theory, this work exhibits a huge potential of generalized suitability for next generation DL based ultrafine OAM optical communication, which might even be applied to microwave, millimeter wave, and terahertz OAM communication systems.

We explore a single degenerate optical cavity supporting a synthetic two-dimensional space, which includes the frequency and the orbital angular momentum (OAM) axes of light. We create the effective gauge potential inside this synthetic space and show that the system exhibits topologically protected one-way edge states along the OAM axis at the boundaries of the frequency dimension. In this synthetic space, we present a robust generation and manipulation of entanglement between the frequency and OAM of photons. Our Letter shows that a higher-dimensional synthetic space involving multiple degrees of freedom of light can be achieved in a “zero-dimensional” spatial structure, pointing towards a unique platform to explore topological photonics and to realize potential applications in optical communications and quantum information processing.

Birefringent effect dependent on magnetic intensity and wavelength in a water-based ${\mathrm{Fe}}_3{\mathrm{O}}_4$ magnetic fluid over the wavelength range of $400–700\mathrm{nm}$ is studied in this letter. The results are compared with the theory proposed by Llewellyn [J. Phys. D 16, 95 (1983)], in which the optical anistropic properties of the magnetic fluid due to the aggregation of the particles at a relatively low density is suggested. It is shown that the degree of aggregation corresponds to the value of the axial ratio of the aggregated particles. So does the magnitude of the birefringence.

Measuring topological invariants is an essential task in characterizing topological phases of matter. They are usually obtained from the number of edge states due to the bulk-edge correspondence or from interference since they are integrals of the geometric phases in the energy band. It is commonly believed that the bulk band structures could not be directly used to obtain the topological invariants. Here, we implement the experimental extraction of Zak phase from the bulk band structures of a Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model in the synthetic frequency dimension. Such synthetic SSH lattices are constructed in the frequency axis of light, by controlling the coupling strengths between the symmetric and antisymmetric supermodes of two bichromatically driven rings. We measure the transmission spectra and obtain the projection of the time-resolved band structure on lattice sites, where a strong contrast between the non-trivial and trivial topological phases is observed. The topological Zak phase is naturally encoded in the bulk band structures of the synthetic SSH lattices, which can hence be experimentally extracted from the transmission spectra in a fiber-based modulated ring platform using a laser with telecom wavelength. Our method of extracting topological phases from the bulk band structure can be further extended to characterize topological invariants in higher dimensions, while the exhibited trivial and non-trivial transmission spectra from the topological transition may find future applications in optical communications.