Ultrafast reset-free integrated polarization tracking enabled by thin-film lithium tantalate

The rapid growth of artificial-intelligence computing demands high-bandwidth and energy-efficient data-center interconnects. Although self-homodyne coherent (SHC) transmission reduces digital signal-processing complexity, its practical deployment is limited by ultrafast state-of-polarization (SOP) fluctuations that destabilize coherent reception. Here we show an ultrafast adaptive polarization controller (APC) based on thin-film lithium tantalate, enabled by the co-design of a photonic chip, a finite-boundary gradient-descent (FBGD) algorithm, and a low-latency real-time control system. The FBGD algorithm incorporates the finite phase boundary directly into the control strategy, enabling reset-free continuous SOP tracking. The implemented APC is validated through both standalone polarization-tracking measurements and a dual-polarization 16-QAM SHC 400-Gbps transmission system. Stable reset-free operation under continuous polarization disturbances is maintained up to 1 Mrad·s⁻¹. These results establish a previously inaccessible operating regime for integrated polarization control and provide a practical route toward ultrafast and reset-free polarization control in coherent optical interconnects and other polarization-sensitive photonic systems. This study reports an integrated chip that stabilizes light polarization with a previously unattainable combination of reset-free operation and Mrad/s-rate tracking for robust optical interconnects.