Optically defined cavities in driven-dissipative photonic lattices

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how external optical drives can be used to create and control highly localized light modes in driven-dissipative photonic lattices, enabling reconfigurable optical cavities at the single-site level.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method of manipulating interference in lossy photonic lattices using external drives to generate reconfigurable localized modes.

Findings

Localized modes achieved in honeycomb lattices with controlled phase drives

Demonstration of light confinement down to a single lattice site

Potential for enhanced nonlinear effects and precise light-matter control

Abstract

The engineering of localised modes in photonic structures is one of the main targets of modern photonics. An efficient strategy to design these modes is to use the interplay of constructive and destructive interference in periodic photonic lattices. This mechanism is at the origin of defect modes in photonic bandgaps, bound states in the continuum and compact localised states in flat bands. Here we show that in lattices of lossy resonators, the addition of external optical drives with controlled phase enlarges the possibilities of manipulating interference effects and allows designing novel types of localised modes. Using a honeycomb lattice of coupled micropillars resonantly driven with several laser spots at energies within its photonic bands we demonstrate the localisation of light in at-will geometries down to a single site. These localised modes can be seen as fully reconfigurable optical cavities with the potentiality of enhancing nonlinear effects and of controlling light-matter interactions with single site resolution.