Event Details

Optics News

Experimental Realization of Deep-Subwavelength Confinement in Dielectric Optical Resonators

Speaker: Mariia Shutova

The ability to highly localize light with strong electric field enhancement is critical for enabling higher-efficiency solar cells, light sources, and modulators. While deep-subwavelength modes can be realized with plasmonic resonators, large losses in these metal structures preclude most practical applications. I will show you an alternative approach to achieving subwavelength localization of the electric and displacement fields that is not accompanied by losses. Experiment demonstrates a dielectric bowtie photonic crystal structure that supports mode volumes commensurate with plasmonic elements and quality factors that reveal ultralow losses.

A Silicon Brillouin Laser

Speaker: Sean O'Connor

Silicon photonics has many applications such as high-bandwidth communications and silicon chip technologies due to optical and electrical control of silicon. However, there is difficulty with developing all-silicon lasers due to silico's indirect band-gap, and lasers are often coupled to silicon chips externally. I will present how Otterstrom et al. overcome this and demonstrate a nonlinear Brillouin laser in silicon using their suspended waveguide with "racetrack" resonator cavity. We will also discuss their observations on the phonon linewidth narrowing. Source: Science, doi: 10.1126/science.aar6113