Thermo-optic hysteresis with bound states in the continuum

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates thermo-optic hysteresis in silicon structures with bound states in the continuum, showing it can occur at low light intensities due to radiative heat transfer effects.

Contribution

It introduces a non-linear model accounting for radiative heat transfer to describe thermo-optic hysteresis in BIC-supporting silicon structures.

Findings

Hysteresis occurs at incident light intensities around 1 W/m^2.

Thermo-optic hysteresis is achievable at the red edge of visible spectrum.

Radiative heat transfer is a key cooling mechanism in the model.

Abstract

We consider thermo-optic hysteresis in a silicon structure supporting bound state in the continuum. Taking into account radiative heat transfer as a major cooling mechanism we constructed a non-linear model describing the optical response. It is shown that the thermo-optic hysteresis can be obtained with low intensities of incident light $I_0\approx 1~\rm{W/m^2}$ at the red edge of the visible under the critical coupling condition.