Exceptional Point of Sixth Order Degeneracy in a Modified Coupled Resonators Optical Waveguide

TL;DR

This paper reports the first experimental realization of a sixth order exceptional point of degeneracy in a modified coupled resonator optical waveguide, revealing new scaling laws for quality factor and lasing threshold with potential applications in ultra-low-threshold lasers and sensors.

Contribution

It introduces a 6th order EPD in a realistic, lossless photonic structure and derives novel scaling laws for Q factor and lasing threshold near this degeneracy.

Findings

First demonstration of 6th order EPD in a realistic structure

Q factor scales as N^7 with cavity length

Lasing threshold scales as N^{-7} near 6DBE

Abstract

We demonstrate for the first time the occurrence of a sixth order exceptional point of degeneracy (EPD) in a realistic multimode optical photonic structure by using a modified periodic coupled resonators optical waveguide (CROW), at the optical wavelength ${\lambda_e} = 1550 nm$. The 6th order EPD is obtained in a CROW without the need of loss or gain and such an EPD corresponds to a very special band edge of the periodic photonic structure where six eigenmode coalesce, so we refer to it as the 6th order degenerate band edge (6DBE). Moreover, we report a new scaling law of the quality factor Q of an optical cavity made of such a periodic 6DBE-CROW with cavity length as $Q{\propto}N^7$ with $N$ being the number of unit cells in the periodic finite-length CROW. Furthermore, we elaborate on the application of the 6DBE to ultra-low-threshold lasers. We present a novel scaling law of the lasing threshold that scales as $N^{-7}$when operating near the 6DBE. Also, we show the superiority of the threshold scaling of the 6DBE-CROW to the scaling of another CROW with the same size operating near a 4th order EPD that is often referred to as the degenerate band edge (DBE). The lasing threshold scaling of the DBE-CROW laser is shown here for the first time. We also discuss the high sensitivity of the proposed 6DBE-CROW to perturbations, that may find applications in sensors, modulators, optical switches, nonlinear devices, and Q-switching cavities.