Thermal radiation from optically driven Kerr ($\chi^{(3)}$) photonic cavities

TL;DR

This paper investigates how nonlinear Kerr photonic cavities can significantly enhance and control thermal radiation through bistability, spectral line alterations, and thermo-optic effects, with potential applications in tunable photonic devices.

Contribution

It extends the understanding of thermal radiation in nonlinear optical cavities by demonstrating bistability-induced radiation enhancement and tunable spectral features via Kerr-mediated effects.

Findings

Bistability can increase thermal radiation by orders of magnitude.

Perfect linear absorptivity enables dramatic tuning of radiative properties.

Spectral peaks can be controlled by cavity temperature and interference effects.

Abstract

We study thermal radiation from nonlinear ($\chi^{(3)}$) photonic cavities coupled to external channels and subject to incident monochromatic light. Our work extends related work on nonlinear mechanical oscillators [Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 110602 (2006)] to the problem of thermal radiation, demonstrating that bistability can enhance thermal radiation by orders of magnitude and result in strong lineshape alternations, including "super-narrow spectral peaks" occurring at the onset of kinetic phase transitions. We show that when the cavities are designed so as to have perfect linear absorptivity (rate matching), such thermally activated transitions can be exploited to dramatically tune the output power and radiative properties of the cavity, leading to a kind of Kerr-mediated thermo-optic effect. Finally, we demonstrate that in certain parameter regimes, the output radiation exhibits Stokes and anti-Stokes side peaks whose relative magnitudes can be altered by tuning the internal temperature of the cavity relative to its surroundings, a consequence of strong correlations and interference between the emitted and reflected radiation.