Cavity nonlinear optics enables intriguing physical phenomena to occur at micro- or nano-scales with modest input powers. While this enhances capabilities in applications such as comb generation, frequency conversion and quantum optics, undesired nonlinear effects including photorefraction and thermal bistability are exacerbated. In this letter, we propose and demonstrate a highly effective method of achieving cavity stabilization using an auxiliary laser for controlling photorefraction in a z-cut periodically poled lithium niobate (LN) microcavity system. Our numerical study accurately models the photorefractive effect under high input powers, guiding future analyses and development of LN microcavity systems.
Thin-film lithium niobate is an attractive integrated photonics platform due to its low optical loss and favorable optical nonlinear and electro-optic properties. However, in applications such as second harmonic generation, frequency comb generation, and microwave-to-optics conversion, the device performance is strongly impeded by the photorefractive effect inherent in thin-films. In this paper, we show that the dielectric cladding on lithium niobate microring resonator has a significant influence on the photorefractive effect. By removing the dielectric cladding layer, the photorefractive eff…
We investigate the impact of photorefractive effect on lithium niobate integrated quantum photonic circuits dedicated to continuous variable on-chip experiments. The circuit main building blocks, i.e. cavities, directional couplers, and periodically poled nonlinear waveguides are studied. This work demonstrates that, even when the effect of photorefractivity is weaker than spatial mode hopping, they might compromise the success of on-chip quantum photonics experiments. We describe in detail the characterization methods leading to the identification of this possible issue. We also study to whic…
Topological photonics has attracted widespread research attention in the past decade due to its fundamental interest and unique manner in controlling light propagation for advanced applications. Paradigmatic approaches have been proposed to achieve topological phases including topological insulators in a variety of photonic systems. In particular, photonic lattices composed of evanescently coupled waveguide arrays have been employed conveniently to explore and investigate topological physics. In this article, we review our recent work on demonstration of topological phenomena in reconfigurable…
Photorefractive tuning seeded by third-harmonic light in a diamond photonic crystal cavity
Institute for Quantum Science and Technology, University of Calgary（卡尔加里大学量子科学与技术研究所）；Department of Physics, University of Alberta（阿尔伯塔大学物理系）；National Research Council Canada, Quantum and Nanotechnology Research Centre（加拿大国家研究委员会量子与纳米技术研究中心）；nanoFAB Centre, University of Alberta（阿尔伯塔大学纳米加工中心）
We theoretically demonstrate high Quality factor micropillar cavities with record low mode volumes based on the TiO2/SiO2 material system. The proposed cavities have Q/V three orders of magnitude larger than previously reported ones. We show that our cavity embedded with diamond nanocrystal provides a feasible platform for cavity quantum electrodynamics experiments in the strong coupling limit.
We perform numerical studies of the effect of sidewall imperfections on the resonant state broadening of the optical microdisk cavities for lasing applications. We demonstrate that even small edge roughness causes a drastic degradation of high-Q whispering gallery (WG) mode resonances reducing their Q-values by many orders of magnitude. At the same time, low-Q WG resonances are rather insensitive to the surface roughness. The results of numerical simulation obtained using the scattering matrix technique, are analyzed and explained in terms of wave reflection at a curved dielectric interface co…
We present a simple method to tune optical micro- and nanocavities with picometer precision in the resonant wavelength, corresponding to an effective sub atomic monolayer control of the cavity dimension. This is obtained through resonant photo-electrochemical etching, with in-situ monitoring of the optical spectrum. We employ this technique to spectrally align an ensemble of resonant cavities in a permanent manner, overcoming the dimension variability resulting from current nanofabrication techniques. In a device containing several resonators, each is individually addressed and tuned, with no …
Fast and highly accurate method based on the Muller contour integral equations and a trigonometric-trigonometric Galerkin discretization technique is presented for spectral design and fine-tuning of clusters of whispering-gallery (WG) mode microdisk resonators and photonic crystal (PC) defect cavities. It is shown that degeneracy and near-degeneracy of natural modes as well as modes optical confinement in coupled resonator clusters are significantly influenced by the symmetry of the structure. Photonic molecules with greatly enhanced quality factors are designed by exploiting the symmetry of t…
We have developed a scattering-matrix approach for numerical calculation of resonant states and Q-values of a nonideal optical disk cavity of an arbitrary shape and of an arbitrary varying refraction index. The developed method has been applied to study the effect of surface roughness and inhomogeneity of the refraction index on Q-values of microdisk cavities for lasing applications. We demonstrate that even small surface roughness can lead to a drastic degradation of high-Q cavity modes by many orders of magnitude. The results of numerical simulation are analyzed and explained in terms of wav…
A new analogy between optical propagation and heat diffusion in heterogeneous anisotropic media has been proposed recently [S. Guenneau, C. Amra, and D. Veynante, Optics Express Vol. 20, 8207-8218 (2012)]. A detailed derivation of this unconventional correspondence is presented and developed. In time harmonic regime, all thermal parameters are related to optical ones in artificial metallic media, thus making possible to use numerical codes developed for optics. Then the optical admittance formalism is extended to heat conduction in multilayered structures. The concepts of planar micro-cavities…
We propose a technique aimed at cooling a harmonically oscillating mirror mechanically coupled to another vibrating mirror to its quantum mechanical ground state. Our method involves optmechanical coupling between two optical cavities. We show that the cooling can be controlled by the mechanical coupling strength between the two movable mirrors, the phase difference between the mechanical modes of the two oscillating mirrors and the photon number in each cavity. We also show that both mechanical and optical cooling can be achieved by transferring energy from one cavity to the other. We also an…
We study the frequency splitting of the polarization eigenmodes of the fundamental transverse mode in CO2 laser-machined, high-finesse optical Fabry-Perot cavities and investigate the influence of the geometry of the cavity mirrors. Their highly reflective surfaces are typically not rotationally symmetric but have slightly different radii of curvature along two principal axes. We observe that the eccentricity of such elliptical mirrors lifts the degeneracy of the polarization eigenmodes. The impact of the eccentricity increases for smaller radii of curvature. A model derived from corrections t…
A coherently driven Kerr optical cavity is able to convert a continuous-wave laser to a sequence of ultrashort soliton pulses, enabling the generation of broadband and mode-locked frequency combs. Kerr cavity solitons are balanced through an energy exchange with the driving pump field. Improving the energy conversion efficiency from the pump to the soliton is of great significance for practical applications, but remains an outstanding challenge due to a limited temporal overlap between the soliton and the pump. Here, we report the discovery of temporal Kerr solitons in mutually coupled cavitie…
We propose and experimentally demonstrate the enhancement in the filtering quality (Q) factor of an integrated micro-ring resonator (MRR) by embedding it in an integrated Fabry-Perot (FP) cavity formed by cascaded Sagnac loop reflectors (SLRs). By utilizing coherent interference within the FP cavity to reshape the transmission spectrum of the MRR, both the Q factor and the extinction ratio (ER) can be significantly improved. The device is theoretically analyzed, and practically fabricated on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer. Experimental results show that up to 11-times improvement in Q fact…
We demonstrate broadband tuning of an optomechanical microcavity optical resonance by exploring the large optomechanical coupling of a double-wheel microcavity and its uniquely low mechanical stiffness. Using a pump laser with only 13 mW at telecom wavelengths we show tuning of the silicon nitride microcavity resonances over 32 nm. This corresponds to a tuning power efficiency of only 400 $μ$W/nm. By choosing a relatively low optical Q resonance ($\approx$18,000) we prevent the cavity from reaching the regime of regenerative optomechanical oscillations. The static mechanical displacement induc…
Frequency combs have become a prominent research area in optics. Of particular interest as integrated comb technology are chip-scale sources, such as semiconductor lasers and microresonators, which consist of resonators embedding a nonlinear medium either with or without population inversion. Such active and passive cavities were so far treated distinctly. Here we propose a formal unification by introducing a general equation that describes both types of cavities. The equation also captures the physics of a hybrid device - a semiconductor ring laser with an external optical drive - in which we…
A semiconductor microcavity embedding donor impurities and excited by a laser field is modelled. By including general decay and dephasing processes, and in particular cavity photon leakage, detailed simulations show that control over the spin dynamics is significally enhanced in high-quality-factor cavities, in which case picosecond laser pulses may produce spin-flip with high-fidelity final states.
A complete integrated table-top facility for the study of high-$Q$ Whispering Gallery Modes in solid and liquid micro-cavities is described, with emphasis on the in situ fabrication of reliable tapered fibers of sub-micron waist sizes for coupling light into time-dependent liquid micro-cavities. The experimental parameters have been chosen to get nearly adiabatic tapers, with their waist size consistent with the theoretical model. The oscillations in the transmitted power during fiber tapering are monitored to check the coupling of higher order modes and identify the point when the fiber is su…
Recently, it has been shown that spiral-shaped microdisk cavities support highly nonorthogonal pairs of copropagating modes with a preferred sense of rotation (spatial chirality) [Wiersig et al., Phys. Rev. A 78, 053809 (2008)]. Here, we provide numerical evidence which indicates that such pairs are a common feature of deformed microdisk cavities which lack mirror symmetries. In particular, we demonstrate that discontinuities of the cavity boundary such as the notch in the spiral cavity are not needed. We find a quantitative relation between the nonorthogonality and the chirality of the modes …
The coupling of CdTe/ZnTe quantum dot (QD) emission to micropillar cavity eigenmodes in the weak coupling regime is demonstrated. We analyze photoluminescence spectra of QDs embedded in monolithic micropillar cavities based on Bragg mirrors which contain MgSe/ZnTe/MgTe superlattices as low-index material. The pillar emission shows pronounced cavity eigenmodes and their spectral shape is in good agreement with simulations. QD emission in resonance with the cavity mode is shown to be efficiently guided toward the detector and an experimental Purcell enhancement by a factor of 5.7 is determined, …
We report a circuit cavity optomechanical system in which a nanomechanical resonator is adiabatically embedded inside an optical ring resonator with ultralow transition loss. The nanomechanical device forms part of the top layer of a horizontal silicon slot ring resonator, which enables dispersive coupling to the dielectric substrate via a tapered nanogap. Our measurements show nearly uncompromised optical quality factors (Q) after the release of the mechanical beam.
In Ref. [Parra-Rivas at al., 2013], using the Swift-Hohenberg equation, we introduced a mechanism that allows to generate oscillatory and excitable soliton dynamics. This mechanism was based on a competition between a pinning force at inhomogeneities and a pulling force due to drift. Here, we study the effect of such inhomogeneities and drift on temporal solitons and Kerr frequency combs in fiber cavities and microresonators, described by the Lugiato-Lefever equation with periodic boundary conditions. We demonstrate that for low values of the frequency detuning the competition between inhomoge…
We investigate the generation and transfer of entangled states between two coupled microtoroidal cavities considering two different types of couplings, namely i) via a bridge qubit and ii) via evanescent fields. The cavities support two counter-propagating whispering-gallery modes (WGMs) that may also interact with each other. We firstly show that it is possible to transfer, with high fidelity, a maximally entangled state between the two modes of the first cavity (cavity 1) to the two modes of the second cavity (cavity 2), independently of the type of coupling. Interesting differences, though,…
The development of solid-state photonic quantum technologies is of great interest for fundamental studies of light-matter interactions and quantum information science. Diamond has turned out to be an attractive material for integrated quantum information processing due to the extraordinary properties of its colour centres enabling e.g. bright single photon emission and spin quantum bits. To control emitted photons and to interconnect distant quantum bits, micro-cavities directly fabricated in the diamond material are desired. However, the production of photonic devices in high-quality diamond …
The quasi-bound modes localized on stable periodic ray orbits of dielectric micro-cavities are constructed in the short-wavelength limit using the parabolic equation method. These modes are shown to coexist with irregularly spaced "chaotic" modes for the generic case. The wavevector quantization rule for the quasi-bound modes is derived and given a simple physical interpretation in terms of Fresnel reflection; quasi-bound modes are explictly constructed and compared to numerical results. The effect of discrete symmetries of the resonator is analyzed and shown to give rise to quasi-degenerate m…
We propose and analyze a family of nanoscale cavities for electrically-pumped surface-emitting semiconductor lasers that use surface plasmons to provide optical mode confinement in cavities which have dimensions in the 100-300 nm range. The proposed laser cavities are in many ways nanoscale optical versions of micropatch antennas that are commonly used at microwave/RF frequencies. Surface plasmons are not only used for mode confinement but also for output beam shaping to realize single-lobe far-field radiation patterns with narrow beam waists from subwavelength size cavities. We identify the c…
We report a process for fabricating high quality, defect-free spherical mirror templates suitable for developing high finesse optical Fabry-Perot resonators. The process utilizes the controlled reflow of borosilicate glass and differential pressure to produce mirrors with 0.3 nanometer surface roughness. The dimensions of the mirrors are in the 0.5-5mm range making them suitable candidates for integration with on-chip neutral atom and ion experiments where enhanced interaction between atoms and photons are required. Moreover the mirror curvature, dimension and placement is readily controlled a…
In this paper, a differential MOEMS accelerometer based on the Fabry-Perot (FP) micro-cavities is presented. The optical system of the device consists of two FP cavities and the mechanical system is composed of a proof mass that is suspended by four springs. The applied acceleration tends to move the PM from its resting position. This mechanical displacement can be measured by the FP interferometer formed between the proof mass cross-section and the optical fiber end face. The proposed sensor is fabricated on a silicon on insulator (SOI) wafer using the bulk micromachining method. The results …
GeSn alloys are nowadays considered as the most promising materials to build Group IV laser sources on silicon (Si) in a full complementary metal oxide semiconductor-compatible approach. Recent GeSn laser developments rely on increasing the band structure directness, by increasing the Sn content in thick GeSn layers grown on germanium (Ge) virtual substrates (VS) on Si. These lasers nonetheless suffer from a lack of defect management and from high threshold densities. In this work we examine the lasing characteristics of GeSn alloys with Sn contents ranging from 7 \% to 10.5 \%. The GeSn layer…
We present a monolithic semiconductor microcavity design for enhanced light-matter interaction and photon extraction efficiency of an embedded quantum emitter such as a quantum dot or color center. The microcavity is a hemispherical Fabry-Perot design consisting of a planar back mirror and a top curved mirror. Higher order modes are suppressed in the structure by reducing the height of the curved mirror, leading to efficient photon extraction into a fundamental mode with a Gaussian far-field radiation pattern. The cavity finesse can be varied easily by changing the reflectivity of the mirrors …
In single microdisks, embedded active emitters intrinsically affect the cavity mode of microdisks, which results in a trivial symmetric backscattering and a low controllability. Here we propose a macroscopical control of the backscattering direction by optimizing the cavity size. The signature of positive and negative backscattering directions in each single microdisk is confirmed with two strongly coupled microdisks. Furthermore, the diabolical points are achieved at the resonance of two microdisks, which agrees well with the theoretical calculations considering backscattering directions. The…
The concept of a digital cavity is presented. The functionality of a tunable radio-frequency/microwave cavity with unrestricted Q-factor is implemented. The theoretical aspects of the cavity and its potential applications in high resolution spectroscopy and synchronization of clocks together with examples in signal processing and data acquisition are discussed.
Integration of single-photon emitters (SPEs) with resonant photonic structures is a promising approach for realizing compact and efficient single-photon sources for quantum communications, computing, and sensing. Efficient interaction between the SPE and the photonic cavity requires that the cavity's resonance matches the SPE emission line. Here we demonstrate a new method for tuning silicon nitride (Si3N4) microring cavities via controlled deposition of the cladding layers. Guided by numerical simulations, we deposit silicon dioxide (SiO2) nanolayers onto Si3N4 ridge structures in steps of 50…
We present a scalable architecture for the exploration of interacting topological phases of photons in arrays of microwave cavities, using established techniques from cavity and circuit quantum electrodynamics. A time-reversal symmetry breaking (non-reciprocal) flux is induced by coupling the microwave cavities to ferrites, allowing for the production of a variety of topological band structures including the $α=1/4$ Hofstadter model. Effective photon-photon interactions are included by coupling the cavities to superconducting qubits, and are sufficient to produce a $ν=1/2$ bosonic Laughlin pud…
