Dark state lasers

Abstract

We propose a new type of laser resonator based on imaginary "energy-level splitting" (imaginary coupling, or quality factor Q splitting) in a pair of coupled microcavities. A particularly advantageous arrangement involves two microring cavities with different free-spectral ranges (FSRs) in a configuration wherein they are coupled by "far-field" interference in a shared radiation channel. A novel Vernier-like effect for laser resonators is designed where only one longitudinal resonant mode has a lower loss than the small signal gain and can achieve lasing while all other modes are suppressed. This configuration enables ultra-widely tunable single-frequency lasers based on either homogeneously or inhomogeneously broadened gain media. The concept is an alternative to the common external cavity configurations for achieving tunable single-mode operation in a laser. The proposed laser concept builds on a high-Q "dark state" that is established by radiative interference coupling and bears a direct analogy to parity-time (PT) symmetric Hamiltonians in optical systems. Variants of this concept should be extendable to parametric-gain based oscillators, enabling use of ultrabroadband parametric gain for widely tunable single-frequency light sources.

References in corpus (3)

• Physical realization of $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetric potential scattering in a planar slab waveguide
• Ultra-low-loss CMOS-Compatible Waveguide Crossing Arrays Based on Multimode Bloch Waves and Imaginary Coupling
• High-Q Contacted Ring Microcavities with Scatterer-Avoiding "Wiggler" Bloch Wave Supermode Fields

Cited by in corpus (20)

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• Toroidal eigenmodes in all-dielectric metamolecules
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• Hyperparametric oscillation via bound states in the continuum
• Selective Filtering of Photonic Quantum Entanglement via Anti-Parity-Time Symmetry
• Modeling quasi-dark states with Temporal Coupled-Mode Theory
• Inverse Vernier Effects in Coupled Lasers
• Laser Mode Bifurcations Induced by $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-Breaking Exceptional Points
• Bound States in Continuum and Zero-Index Metamaterials: A Review
• Impact of non-Hermitian Mode interaction on Inter-cavity Light transfer
• Loss revives bistable state near the exceptional point in a non-Hermitian microwave photonic meta-molecule
• Engineering bound states in continuum via nonlinearity induced extra dimension
• Dynamic Control of Coupling Regimes in Oscillator Systems via Tunable Open Channels
• Loss-driven topological transitions in lasing