Physics Chat
Design of Coupled Ring Resonators for Bulk Mode Lasing
Speaker: Joe Mahoney (Sang Soon Oh's group)
Date: Thursday 17 November 2022
Time: 14:00
Venue: Queen's building WX3.07 with zoom live streaming
Topological photonics has become an increasingly popular area of research. This interest partly stems from being able to create photonic devices that produce edge modes that are significantly more robust against defects compared to more traditional photonic devices. Although these edge modes are more resilient to defects, by their very nature they are locally confined to limited areas of a device. This limits their potential maximum performance as active devices in photonic systems. One approach to overcome this issue is to introduce synthetic gauge fields that can enable the delocalization of edge modes over the bulk whilst maintaining the benefits of topological protection [1]. Although significant work has been done in this area using tight binding and transfer matrix method (TMM) models, only so much information can be obtained from such simulations. In order to gain clearer insight into fabrication requirements for real devices, FDTD simulations are required. In this talk, I will present my work on this recent project from my PhD. I will first present comparisons between TMM and my FDTD simulations, before moving onto looking at current results on achieving the desired delocalization of topologically protected modes using the non-Hermitian Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model with ring resonators.
References:
S. Longhi, Non-hermitian gauged topological laser arrays, Ann. Phys., vol. 530, no. 7, p. 1800023, 2018