Optimizing the chiral Purcell factor for unidirectional single photon emitters in topological photonic crystal waveguides using inverse design

TL;DR

This paper introduces an inverse design method to enhance chiral photon emission in topological photonic crystal waveguides, achieving significant improvements in Purcell factors and group indices for unidirectional single-photon sources.

Contribution

The authors develop a fully three-dimensional inverse design approach using guided-mode expansion and automatic differentiation to optimize chiral Purcell factors in topological photonic waveguides.

Findings

Achieved nearly 10-fold increase in Purcell factor.

Designed modes with group indices up to 350.

Enhanced unidirectional emission efficiency.

Abstract

We present an inverse design approach to significantly improve the figures-of-merit for chiral photon elements and quantum emitters in topological photonic crystal slab waveguides. Beginning with a topological waveguide mode with a group index of approximately 10 and a maximum forwards or backwards Purcell factor at a chiral point of less than 0.5, we perform optimizations of the directional Purcell factor. We use a fully three dimensional guided-mode expansion method to efficiently calculate waveguide band dispersion properties and modes, while automatic differentiation is employed to calculate the gradient of objective functions. We present two example improved designs: (i) a topological mode with an accessible group index of approximately 30 and a maximum unidirectional Purcell factor at a chiral point greater then 4.5 representing a nearly 10-fold improvement to the Purcell factor, and (ii) a slow light mode, well away from the Brillouin zone edge with a group index greater then 350 and a maximum unidirectional Purcell factor at a chiral point greater than 45.