Tunable Open‐Access Microcavities for Solid‐State Quantum Photonics and Polaritonics

Abstract

Optical microcavities are powerful platforms widely applied in quantum information and integrated photonic circuits, among which the open‐access microcavity is a newly emerging cavity structure consisting of a micro‐sized concave mirror and a planar mirror controlled individually by groups of nanopositioners, whilst light emitters can be grown or transferred at the antinode of the cavity optical modes. Compared with monolithic microcavities, the open‐access microcavity enables the simultaneous realization of small mode volume, large‐range tunability, flexible structural engineering, and easiness for integration with external emitters, exhibiting extensive applications in the fields of solid‐state quantum photonics and polaritonics over the last decade. This review first introduces the basic theory and the construction methods of open‐access microcavities, followed by the recent advances of their applications in exciton‐polaritons, photon condensates, quantum light sources, and nanoparticle sensing.

Characterization of higher harmonic modes in Fabry–Pérot microcavity organic light emitting diodes

“…Microcavity OLEDs represent a promising building block for photonic applications including novel monochromatic and tunable white light sources comprising coupled microcavity OLEDs, which may be useful for solid state lighting or multi-wavelength communication systems 42 , 43 . A thorough characterization of the resonant modes beyond the photonic ground state and a predictive computational modeling tool will enable the design of complex device structures that may rely on pumping, sampling, or mixing of these higher order harmonic modes.…”

Time-delay polaritonics

“…In this work, we demonstrate the prospect of an ultrafast microscale platform for engineering time-delayed coupled oscillator networks based on condensates of microcavity exciton-polaritons (from here on polaritons) 18,19 . Polaritons are bosonic quasi-particles that can undergo a power-driven quantum phase transition to a macroscopically occupied state with long-range phase coherence 20 .…”

Tunable Polymer/Air‐Bragg Optical Microcavity Configurations for Controllable Light–Matter Interaction Scenarios

“…Optical microcavities play an important role in a wide range of research areas, such as light-matter interaction (LMI), [1][2][3][4] nonlinear optics, [5,6] and quantum information processing. [1,7,8] Various high-quality microcavities [1,[9][10][11] have been explored for decades and enabled the hunt for ultralow-threshold nanolasers, [5,12,13] opening up fundamental cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) experiments [14][15][16][17][18][19] and the study of Bose-Einstein-like condensation (BEC) of polaritons in solids. [20][21][22][23] Microcavities have reached popularity not only for conventional (more energy-efficient) lasers, often harnessing the weak coupling regime in suitable microcavity structures, [11,12,24] but also for polariton physics [3,25] as well as the novel field of polariton chemistry [26] and become indispensable for optical quantum technologies.…”

“…[46][47][48] Many different and unique approaches have been already demonstrated to improve the confinement of the light and functionality of cavity systems. [1,3] Some approaches such as photonic crystal membranes and whispering gallery modes do provide significant confinement of light in all the three spatial dimensions, whereas open-cavity configurations with an air-gapped microresonator such as fiber-based FP cavities provide intrinsic tunability in both the spectral and spatial domains [10,34,45,46,49] as flexible light-matter interfaces. Often, a top-down nanotechnology approach is used to define precise (monolithic) resonator structures, or movable reflectors are combined to form tunable open resonators.…”