Lithographically fabricated optical cavities for refractive index sensing

Since the development of distributed Bragg gratings, high resolution lithography and etching have been applied towards the concentration of light. The most important application of lithographically fabricated microcavities has been for the spectral control over laser emission. Here we describe the opportunities that arise from further miniaturization of laser cavities by using high index contrast photonic crystal mirrors and annular Bragg reflectors. We have used these optical cavities, with mode volumes as small as 10^–17 l, to perform spectroscopic analysis and compare the mode volumes and sensitivities of these geometries

Broadband Waveguide QED System on a Chip

We demonstrate that a slot waveguide provides a broadband loss-free platform suitable for applications in quantum optics. We find that strong coupling between light quanta and a single quantum emitter placed in the waveguide slot can be achieved with efficiency higher than 96% and Purcell factor (spontaneous emission factor) larger than 200. The proposed system is a promising platform for quantum information processing and can be used to realize an efficient single photon source and optically addressable photon register.Engineering and Applied Science

High-efficiency degenerate four wave-mixing in triply resonant nanobeam cavities

We demonstrate high-efficiency, degenerate four-wave mixing in triply resonant Kerr $\chi^(3)$ photonic crystal (PhC) nanobeam cavities. Using a combination of temporal coupled mode theory and nonlinear finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations, we study the nonlinear dynamics of resonant four-wave mixing processes and demonstrate the possibility of observing high-efficiency limit cycles and steady-state conversion corresponding to $\approx 100$% depletion of the pump light at low powers, even including effects due to losses, self- and cross-phase modulation, and imperfect frequency matching. Assuming operation in the telecom range, we predict close to perfect quantum efficiencies at reasonably low $\sim$ 50 mW input powers in silicon micrometer-scale cavities