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Ultra-high-Q photonic double-heterostructure nanocavity

Nature Materials volume 4, pages 207–210 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

High-quality factor (Q) photonic nanocavities that strongly confine photons in volumes of optical-wavelength dimension are attracting much attention in various fields, including photonics1,2,3,4,5, telecommunications6,7, quantum information8 and cavity quantum electrodynamics9,10, because a strong light–matter interaction is obtained. An important design rule has been proposed11 in an attempt to realize high-Q nanocavities in two-dimensional photonic-crystal slabs. The form of the cavity electric-field distribution should slowly vary, most ideally as described by a gaussian function, in order to suppress out-of-slab photon leakage. However, the exact cavity structure that minimizes photon leakage has not yet been established. Here, we demonstrate the importance of the formation of a photonic double-heterostructure, which has resulted in the realization of nanocavities with extremely high-Q factors of 600,000, more than one order of magnitude higher than any previous reports11,12,13,14. We have also shown theoretically that Q-factors greater than 20,000,000 may be obtained when optimizing the structure.

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Figure 1: The basic photonic-crystal structure and photonic double-heterostructure investigated in this work.
Figure 2: Calculated results that illustrate the effect of a photonic double-heterostructure.
Figure 3: Experimental results.
Figure 4: A nanocavity with a multistep photonic heterostructure.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Core Research for Evolution Science and Technology, Japan Science and Technology Agency, a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research and an IT program of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic Science and Engineering, Kyoto University, Katsura, Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto, 615-8510, Japan

    Bong-Shik Song, Susumu Noda, Takashi Asano & Yoshihiro Akahane

  2. Semiconductor Technologies R&D Laboratories, Sumitomo Electric Industries, Itami, 664-0016, Hyogo, Japan

    Yoshihiro Akahane

Authors
  1. Bong-Shik Song
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  2. Susumu Noda
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  3. Takashi Asano
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  4. Yoshihiro Akahane
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Correspondence to Susumu Noda.

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Song, BS., Noda, S., Asano, T. et al. Ultra-high-Q photonic double-heterostructure nanocavity. Nature Mater 4, 207–210 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1320

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