Moire quasi-bound states in the continuum

TL;DR

This paper introduces moiré quasi-bound states in the continuum in twisted bilayer photonic crystals, demonstrating their dual characteristics of flat bands and high-quality BICs, with applications in enhanced nonlinear optical processes.

Contribution

It combines moiré physics with BICs to create a new optical state, developing an effective model and demonstrating enhanced second-harmonic generation.

Findings

Moiré flat bands can be achieved by tuning twist angle and interlayer coupling.

Moiré quasi-BICs exhibit suppressed radiation loss as twist angle decreases.

Enhanced second-harmonic generation is demonstrated using moiré quasi-BICs.

Abstract

The novel physics of twisted bilayer graphene has motivated extensive studies of magic-angle flat bands hosted by moir\'e structures in electronic, photonic and acoustic systems. On the other hand, bound states in the continuum (BICs) have also attracted great attention in recent years because of their potential applications in the field of designing superior optical devices. Here, we combine these two independent concepts to construct a new optical state in a twisted bilayer photonic crystal slab, which is called as moir\'e quasi-BIC, and numerically demonstrate that such an exotic optical state possesses dual characteristics of moir\'e flat bands and quasi-BICs. To illustrate the mechanism for the formation of moir\'e flat bands, we develop an effective model at the center of the Brillouin zone and show that moir\'e flat bands could be fulfilled by balancing the interlayer coupling strength and the twist angle around the band edge above the light line. Moreover, by decreasing the twist angle of moir\'e photonic crystal slabs with flat bands, it is shown that the moir\'e flat-band mode at the Brillouin center gradually approaches a perfect BIC, where the total radiation loss from all diffraction channels is significantly suppressed. To clarify the advantage of moir\'e quasi-BICs, enhanced second-harmonic generation (SHG) is numerically proven with a wide-angle optical source. The efficiency of SHG assisted by designed moir\'e quasi-BICs can be greatly improved compared with that based on dispersive quasi-BICs with similar quality factors.