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Coherent control of chaotic optical microcavity with reflectionless scattering modes

Nature Physics (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Non-Hermitian wave engineering has attracted a surge of interest in photonics in recent years. Prominent non-Hermitian phenomena include coherent perfect absorption and its generalization, reflectionless scattering modes, in which electromagnetic scattering at the input ports is suppressed due to critical coupling with the power leaked to output ports, and interference phenomena. These concepts are ideally suited to enable real-time dynamic control over absorption, scattering and radiation. Nonetheless, reflectionless scattering modes have not been observed in complex photonic platforms involving open systems and multiple inputs. Here we demonstrate the emergence of reflectionless scattering modes in a chaotic photonic microcavity involving over a thousand optical modes. We model the optical fields in a silicon stadium microcavity within a quasi-normal mode expansion, which is able to capture a dense family of reflection zeros at the input ports, associated with reflectionless scattering modes. We observe non-Hermitian degeneracies of reflectionless scattering modes in the telecommunication wavelength band, enabling efficient dynamic control over light radiation from the cavity.

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Fig. 1: Simulations of RSMs in a chaotic optical microresonator.
Fig. 2: Experimental set-up and chaotic optical microresonator system.
Fig. 3: Experimental results for chaotic RSMs.
Fig. 4: Experimental measurement of emission field intensities.
Fig. 5: Experimental results of the degeneracy of chaotic RSMs.

Data availability

Source data are provided with this paper. All other data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The codes and the in-house software used in this work are available upon request to the corresponding authors.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Z. Li at Stevens Institute of Technology for polishing the edge couplers. This work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Simons Foundation. Fabrication of samples for this work was performed at the Nanofabrication Facility at the Advanced Science Research Center at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Xuefeng Jiang, Shixiong Yin.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Photonics Initiative, Advanced Science Research Center, The City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Xuefeng Jiang, Shixiong Yin, Huanan Li, Jiamin Quan, Heedong Goh, Michele Cotrufo & Andrea Alù

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering, City College, The City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Shixiong Yin & Andrea Alù

  3. MOE Key Laboratory of Weak-Light Nonlinear Photonics, School of Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin, China

    Huanan Li

  4. Institut für Physik, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany

    Julius Kullig & Jan Wiersig

  5. Physics Program, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Andrea Alù

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Contributions

X.J., S.Y. and A.A. conceived the project. X.J. fabricated the device and designed the experiments. X.J. and S.Y. performed the experiments and analysed experimental data with help from J.Q., M.C. and A.A. Theoretical studies and full-wave simulations were performed by S.Y. with help from X.J., H.L., J.K., J.W. and A.A. Study of reflection zeros were performed by H.G. and S.Y. All authors discussed the results. A.A. supervised the project. X.J., S.Y. and A.A. wrote the paper with input from all co-authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrea Alù.

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Nature Physics thanks A. Stone and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–9 and Discussion Sections I–VIII.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

b, Eigenfrequencies across Re(kR) = 25.0–29.2. c, Mode contributions from 47 notable quasi-normal modes. d, Magnitudes of the eigenvalues of the truncated scattering matrix. e, Complex reflection zeros across Re(kR) = 25.0–29.2.

Source Data Fig. 3

a, Reflectance across 1,520–1,545 nm for different relative phases. b–c, Reflectance at RSM(±) for different relative phases. d,g, Two-dimensional data of Husimi plots.

Source Data Fig. 4

Radiated power at different relative phases.

Source Data Fig. 5

a, Reflectance at RSM degeneracy for different relative phases. b, Radiated power at different relative phases at RSM degeneracy. d, Radiated power at different relative phases at different angles at RSM degeneracy.

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Jiang, X., Yin, S., Li, H. et al. Coherent control of chaotic optical microcavity with reflectionless scattering modes. Nat. Phys. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-023-02242-w

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