Tailoring the Local Density of Optical States and directionality of light emission by symmetry-breaking

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to engineer optical modes by symmetry-breaking in gratings, enabling control over light emission directionality and density of states, demonstrated with silicon defect emitters.

Contribution

The work presents a novel approach to manipulate dispersion and emission directionality through symmetry-breaking in high-contrast gratings, allowing customizable optical properties.

Findings

Controlled hybridized modes with various dispersions achieved.

Light emission from silicon defects redirected to desired modes.

Enhanced spontaneous emission into engineered optical states.

Abstract

We present a method to simultaneously engineer the energy-momentum dispersion and the local density of optical states. Using vertical symmetry-breaking in high-contrast gratings, we enable the mixing of modes with different parities, thus producing hybridized modes with controlled dispersion. By tuning geometric parameters, we control the coupling between Bloch modes, leading to flatband, M- and W-shaped dispersion as well as Dirac dispersion. Such a platform opens up a new way to control the direction of emitted photons, and to enhance the spontaneous emission into desired modes. We then experimentally demonstrate that this method can be used to redirect light emission from weak emitters -- defects in Silicon -- to optical modes with adjustable density of states and angle of emission.