Metasurface-stabilized optical microcavities
Abstract
Cavities concentrate light and enhance its interaction with matter. Confining to microscopic volumes is necessary for many applications but space constraints in such cavities limit the design freedom. Here we demonstrate stable optical microcavities by counteracting the phase evolution of the cavity modes using an amorphous Silicon metasurface as cavity end mirror. Careful design allows us to limit the metasurface scattering losses at telecom wavelengths to less than 2% and using a distributed Bragg reflector as metasurface substrate ensures high reflectivity. Our demonstration experimentally achieves telecom-wavelength microcavities with quality factors of up to 4600, spectral resonance linewidths below 0.4 nm, and mode volumes below $$2.7{\lambda }^{3}$$ 2.7 λ 3 . The method introduces freedom to stabilize modes with arbitrary transverse intensity profiles and to design cavity-enhanced hologram modes. Our approach introduces the nanoscopic light control capabilities of dielectric metasurfaces to cavity electrodynamics and is industrially scalable using semiconductor manufacturing processes.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Feb 27, 2023
- Source ID
- 10.1038/s41467-023-36873-7
Entities
People
- Christina M Spägele
- Federico Capasso
- Ileana-Cristina Benea-Chelmus
- Marcus Ossiander
- Maryna L. Meretska
- Sarah Rourke
- Xinghui Yin
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
- Hans Eggenberger Stiftung
- National Science Foundation
- Office of Naval Research
- Swiss National Science Foundation