Integrated Microcomb-Driven Vortex Electromagnetic Waves for Broadband Forward-looking Sensing

Integrated Microcomb-Driven Vortex Electromagnetic Waves for Broadband Forward-looking Sensing | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article Integrated Microcomb-Driven Vortex Electromagnetic Waves for Broadband Forward-looking Sensing Jijun He, Guanqun Sun, Zhekai Zheng, Jiacheng Guo, Wenjun Qi, and 5 more This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-9112621/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Under Review Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Microwave sensing is a critical enabler for all-weather perception, yet its resolution is severely limited when relative motion or large effective apertures are unavailable. Vortex electromagnetic (EM) waves can provide additional azimuthal discrimination, but practical deployment is constrained by the trade-off between bandwidth, mode purity, and hardware complexity. Here, we propose a microwave photonic architecture enabled by a chip-scale dissipative Kerr soliton microcomb that resolves these constraints. The microcomb provides more than 100 optical lines with linewidths below 30 kHz. By optically processing these carriers, we synthesize vortex waves covering an 8 GHz bandwidth (18–26 GHz) with 15 programmable orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes. Compared with a conventional implementations, our approach exhibits higher OAM purity and improved field integrity across the band, while condensing the multi-wavelength source onto a monolithic chip. We demonstrate superior forward-looking imaging performance, clearly resolving both point targets and complex scenes. This work bridges integrated soliton physics with broadband microwave processing, establishing a scalable framework for next-generation compact, high-performance smart sensors. Physical sciences/Optics and photonics/Other photonics/Frequency combs Physical sciences/Engineering/Electrical and electronic engineering Physical sciences/Optics and photonics/Optical physics/Nonlinear optics Physical sciences/Optics and photonics/Applied optics/Microwave photonics Physical sciences/Optics and photonics/Applied optics/Integrated optics Full Text Additional Declarations There is NO Competing Interest. Supplementary Files SupplementaryInformation.pdf Supplementary Information Cite Share Download PDF Status: Under Review Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. 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