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1. Reflectionless dual standing-wave microcavity resonator units for photonic integrated circuits

   https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.403486  

   Al_Qubaisi, Kenaish; Popović, Miloš_A (November 2020, Optics Express)

   We propose a novel photonic circuit element configuration that emulates the through-port response of a bus coupled traveling-wave resonator using two standing-wave resonant cavities. In this “reflectionless resonator unit”, the two constituent cavities, here photonic crystal (PhC) nanobeams, exhibit opposite mode symmetries and may otherwise belong to a single design family. They are coupled evanescently to the bus waveguide without mutual coupling. We show theoretically, and verify using FDTD simulations, that reflection is eliminated when the two cavities are wavelength aligned. This occurs due to symmetry-induced destructive interference at the bus coupling region in the proposed photonic circuit topology. The transmission is equivalent to that of a bus-coupled traveling-wave (e.g. microring) resonator for all coupling conditions. We experimentally demonstrate an implementation fabricated in a new 45 nm silicon-on-insulator complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (SOI CMOS) electronic-photonic process. Both PhC nanobeam cavities have a full-width half-maximum (FWHM) mode length of 4.28μm and measured intrinsic Q’s in excess of 200,000. When the resonances are tuned to degeneracy and coalesce, transmission dips of the over-coupled PhC nanobeam cavities of −16 dB and −17 dB nearly disappear showing a remaining single dip of −4.2 dB, while reflection peaks are simultaneously reduced by 10 dB, demonstrating the quasi-traveling-wave behavior. This photonic circuit topology paves the way for realizing low-energy active devices such as modulators and detectors that can be cascaded to form wavelength-division multiplexed links with smaller power consumption and footprint than traveling wave, ring resonator based implementations. 

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2. Free-standing silicon nitride nanobeams with an efficient fiber-chip interface for cavity QED

   https://doi.org/10.1364/OME.411219  

   Alajlan, Abdulrahman; Khurana, Mohit; Liu, Xiaohan; Cojocaru, Ivan; Akimov, Alexey_V (November 2020, Optical Materials Express)

   We present the design, fabrication and characterization of high quality factor silicon nitride nanobeam PhC cavities at visible wavelengths for coupling to diamond color centers in a cavity QED system. We demonstrate devices with a quality factor of ∼24, 000 (±250) around the zero-phonon line of the germanium-vacancy center in diamond. We also present an efficient fiber-to-waveguide coupling platform for suspended nanophotonics. By gently changing the corresponding effective indices at the fiber-waveguide interface, we achieve a coupling efficiency of ∼96% (±2%) at the cavity resonance. 

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3. Protein sensing using deep subwavelength-engineered photonic crystals

   https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.510541  

   Zhang, Yanrong; Whittington, Christopher_S; Layouni, Rabeb; Cotto, Andres_M; Arnold, Kellen_P; Halimi, Sami_I; Weiss, Sharon_M (January 2024, Optics Letters)

   We demonstrate a higher sensitivity detection of proteins in a photonic crystal platform by including a deep subwavelength feature in the unit cell that locally increases the energy density of light. Through both simulations and experiments, the sensing capability of a deep subwavelength-engineered silicon antislot photonic crystal nanobeam (PhCNB) cavity is compared to that of a traditional PhCNB cavity. The redistribution and local enhancement of the energy density by the 50 nm antislot enable stronger light–molecule interaction at the surface of the antislot and lead to a larger resonance shift upon protein binding. This surface-based energy enhancement is confirmed by experiments demonstrating a nearly 50% larger resonance shift upon attachment of streptavidin molecules to biotin-functionalized antislot PhCNB cavities. 

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4. Low power optical bistability from quantum dots in a nanobeam photonic crystal cavity

   https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0098003  

   Buyukkaya, Mustafa Atabey; Lee, Chang-Min; Mansoori, Ahmad; Balakrishnan, Ganesh; Waks, Edo (August 2022, Applied Physics Letters)

   We demonstrate a low power thermally induced optical bistability at telecom wavelengths and room temperature using a nanobeam photonic crystal cavity embedded with an ensemble of quantum dots. The nanobeam photonic crystal cavity is transfer-printed onto the edge of a carrier chip for thermal isolation of the cavity with an efficient optical coupling between the nanobeam waveguide and optical setup. Reflectivity measurements performed with a tunable laser reveal the thermo-optic nature of the nonlinearity. A bistability power threshold as low as 23 μW and an on/off response contrast of 6.02 dB are achieved from a cavity with a moderately low quality factor of 2830. Our device provides optical bistability at power levels an order of magnitude lower than previous quantum-dot-based devices. 

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5. Guided-mode resonances in flexible 2D terahertz photonic crystals

   https://doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.388761  

   Kyaw, Chan; Yahiaoui, Riad; Chase, Zizwe_A; Tran, Viet; Baydin, Andrey; Tay, Fuyang; Kono, Junichiro; Manjappa, Manukumara; Singh, Ranjan; Abeysinghe, Don_C; et al (May 2020, Optica)

   In terahertz (THz) photonics, there is an ongoing effort to develop thin, compact devices such as dielectric photonic crystal (PhC) slabs with desirable light–matter interactions. However, previous works in THz PhC slabs have been limited to rigid substrates with thicknesses $\sim <\#comment/>100\mathrm{s}$of micrometers. Dielectric PhC slabs have been shown to possess in-plane modes that are excited by external radiation to produce sharp guided-mode resonances with minimal absorption for applications in sensors, optics, and lasers. Here we confirm the existence of guided resonances in a membrane-type THz PhC slab with subwavelength ( ${\mathrm{\lambda <\#comment/>}}_0/6-<\#comment/>{\mathrm{\lambda <\#comment/>}}_0/12$) thicknesses of flexible dielectric polyimide films. The transmittance of the guided resonances was measured for different structural parameters of the unit cell. Furthermore, we exploited the flexibility of the samples to modulate the guided modes for a bend angle of $\mathrm{\theta <\#comment/>}\ge <\#comment/>5^{\circ <\#comment/>}$, confirmed experimentally by the suppression of these modes. The mechanical flexibility of the device allows for an additional degree of freedom in system design for high-speed communications, soft wearable photonics, and implantable medical devices. 

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