Photonic chip-based analogue of the Thomas Effect in special relativity: Important design considerations

Abstract

We report the effect of the unavoidable optical loss on the performance accuracy of a recently proposed photonic chip-based analogue of the relativistic Thomas effect, a well-known phenomenon of special relativity. Our investigations reveal that the optical loss factor of the photonic chip must be ≥ 0.91 so the normalized deviation error is < 1% to cover greater than 95% of its angular operating range.