Programmed all-optical switching in a multistable photonic resonator array - Allard Mosk (Utrecht University, the Netherlands)

A system of coupled photonic crystal nanocavities can show intricate nonlinear behavior with many stable and metastable states resulting from the fast optical and slow thermal coupling between nearby nanocavities. The standard method of mapping out the state space of such a system is by sweeping the wavelength and power of the driving laser. However, not all states of the system can be accessed in this way. We show that by addressing the cavities with an out of plane control laser [1], we can switch in a wide variety of states. Depending on the sequence of control pulses we can select any of several stable states of the nonlinear multi-cavity system. We interpret the results using the coupled thermal and optical equations of motion of the multi-resonator system [2].

[1] Yüce, E. et al. Adaptive Control of Necklace States in a Photonic Crystal Waveguide. ACS Photonics 5, 3984–3988 (2018).
[2] Perrier, K. et al. Mode Mapping Photonic Crystal Nanocavities with Q > 5 × 10^5 Using Free-Carrier Absorption. Phys. Rev. Appl. 18, 034044 (2022).

Contact: Dorian Bouchet