Imaging Nanophotonic Modes of Microresonators using a Focused Ion Beam

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method for imaging nanophotonic modes in microresonators using a focused lithium ion beam, enabling high-resolution, minimally invasive mapping of optical energy distribution.

Contribution

The study presents a new ion beam-based approach for mapping optical modes that avoids perturbing high-Q resonances, providing high spatial and spectral resolution.

Findings

Successfully mapped five modes of a silicon microdisk resonator.

Achieved high spatial and spectral resolution in mode imaging.

Observed ion implantation damage and relaxation dynamics in silicon.

Abstract

Optical microresonators have proven powerful in a wide range of applications, including cavity quantum electrodynamics, biosensing, microfludics, and cavity optomechanics. Their performance depends critically on the exact distribution of optical energy, confined and shaped by the nanoscale device geometry. Near-field optical probes can image this distribution, but the physical probe necessarily perturbs the near field, which is particularly problematic for sensitive high quality factor resonances. We present a new approach to mapping nanophotonic modes that uses a controllably small and local optomechanical perturbation introduced by a focused lithium ion beam. An ion beam (radius about 50 nm) induces a picometer-scale dynamic deformation of the resonator surface, which we detect through a shift in the optical resonance wavelength. We map five modes of a silicon microdisk resonator (Q > 20,000) with both high spatial and spectral resolution. Our technique also enables in-situ observation of ion implantation damage and relaxation dynamics in a silicon lattice.