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Large-scale arrays of ultrahigh-Q coupled nanocavities

Abstract

Coupled microresonators are expected to play a key role in slow-light engineering and various types of light-matter interaction enhancement, especially if they are based on small and high-Q cavities. Although rapid progress has been made on microresonator performance, large-scale arrays of coupled resonators based on high-Q wavelength-sized cavities have not yet been realized. Here, we show large-scale (N > 100) ultrahigh-Q coupled nanocavity arrays based on photonic crystals. This is the first demonstration of large-scale coupled resonator arrays based on wavelength-sized cavities, in which tight-binding sinusoidal dispersion is seen. We confirm that an ultrahigh value of Q (1 × 106) is maintained, even when N is large, and the resonators exhibit very low loss characteristics with regard to light propagation. The ultrahigh value of Q and small size has enabled us to achieve ultraslow light pulse propagation with a group velocity well below 0.01c and a long group delay.

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Figure 1: Coupled resonator based on ultrahigh-Q nanocavities.
Figure 2: Transmission spectra (red line) of coupled nanocavities for various parameters.
Figure 3: Dispersion characteristics of coupled nanocavities.
Figure 4: Quality factor and loss analysis.
Figure 5: Pulse propagation experiments.

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Acknowledgements

We thank H. Taniyama, M. Kato and A. Shinya for helpful discussions and support.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

M.N. wrote the manuscript, analysed the data and led the project. E.K. fabricated the samples, performed the experiments and analysed the data. T.T performed the time-resolved measurements.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Masaya Notomi or Eiichi Kuramochi.

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Notomi, M., Kuramochi, E. & Tanabe, T. Large-scale arrays of ultrahigh-Q coupled nanocavities. Nature Photon 2, 741–747 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2008.226

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