High-Q Optical Cavities in Hyperuniform Disordered Materials

TL;DR

This paper presents the design of high-Q photonic cavities in hyperuniform disordered materials, achieving record quality factors and enabling isotropic band gaps in fabricable slab architectures.

Contribution

It introduces the first designs for high-Q photonic cavities in hyperuniform disordered slabs with isotropic band gaps, demonstrating ultra-high quality factors.

Findings

Quality factors exceeding 10^9 in 2D structures

Quality factors over 20,000 in 3D finite-height slabs

Confined modes classified by electromagnetic symmetry

Abstract

We introduce the first designs for high-Q photonic cavities in slab architectures in hyperuniform disordered solids displaying isotropic band gaps. Despite their disordered character, hyperuniform disordered structures have the ability to tightly confine the TE-polarised radiation in slab configurations that are readily fabricable. The architectures are based on carefully designed local modifications of otherwise unperturbed hyperuniform dielectric structures. We identify a wide range of confined cavity modes, which can be classified according to their approximate symmetry (monopole, dipole, quadrupole, etc.) of the confined electromagnetic wave pattern. We demonstrate that quality factors ($Q$) $Q>10^{9}$ can be achieved for purely 2D structures, and that for three--dimensional finite-height photonic slabs, quality factors $Q>20,000$ can be maintained.