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Light trapping gets a boost

The ability of structures called optical resonators to trap light is often limited by scattering of light off fabrication defects. A physical mechanism that suppresses this scattering has been reported that could lead to improved optical devices.
  1. Kirill Koshelev

    1. Kirill Koshelev is at the Nonlinear Physics Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia, and in the Department of Nanophotonics and Metamaterials, ITMO University, St Petersburg, Russia.

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  2. Yuri Kivshar

    1. Yuri Kivshar is at the Nonlinear Physics Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia, and in the Department of Nanophotonics and Metamaterials, ITMO University, St Petersburg, Russia.

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Devices called optical resonators confine light, but for only a limited time because of unavoidable light emission. Writing in Nature, Jin et al.1 report that such emission can be greatly reduced by using the interference of light waves known as bound states in the continuum. Such waves are akin to exotic electron waves that were introduced in the theory of quantum mechanics almost a century ago2. The authors’ finding could have many technological implications for nanophotonics, quantum optics and nonlinear optics — the study of how intense light interacts with matter.

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Nature 574, 491-492 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03143-w

References

  1. Jin, J. et al. Nature 574, 501–504 (2019).

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  2. von Neumann, J. & Wigner, E. P. Phys. Z. 30, 465–467 (1929).

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  3. Hsu, C. W., Zhen, B., Stone, A. D., Joannopoulos, J. D. & Soljačić, M. Nature Rev. Mater. 1, 16048 (2016).

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  4. Rybin, M. & Kivshar, Y. Nature 541, 165–166 (2017).

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  5. Rybin, M. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 243901 (2017).

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  6. Koshelev, K., Lepeshov, S., Liu, M., Bogdanov, A. & Kivshar, Y. Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 193903 (2018).

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