Augmenting On-Chip Microresonator through Photonic Inverse Design

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how photonic inverse design can significantly enhance on-chip microresonator performance, enabling precise dispersion control, ultra-high quality factors, and selective wavelength operation through both theoretical and experimental methods.

Contribution

It introduces the application of photonic inverse design to on-chip microresonators, achieving advanced dispersion engineering and ultra-high quality factors beyond traditional analytical approaches.

Findings

Achieved quality factors exceeding 2 million on silicon-on-insulator platforms.

Demonstrated flexible dispersion engineering through inverse design.

Enabled selective wavelength-band operation in microresonators.

Abstract

Recent advances in the design and fabrication of on-chip optical microresonators has greatly expanded their applications in photonics, enabling metrology, communications, and on-chip lasers. Designs for these applications require fine control of dispersion, bandwidth and high optical quality factors. Co-engineering these figures of merit remains a significant technological challenge due to design strategies being largely limited to analytical tuning of cross-sectional geometry. Here, we show that photonic inverse-design facilitates and expands the functionality of on-chip microresonators; theoretically and experimentally demonstrating flexible dispersion engineering, quality factor beyond 2 million on the silicon-on-insulator platform with single mode operation, and selective wavelength-band operation.