Backscattering and Hong-Ou-Mandel Manifolds in Microring Resonators

TL;DR

This paper explores how backscattering affects the Hong-Ou-Mandel manifold in microring resonators, revealing robustness and potential benefits of backscattering in complex resonator configurations.

Contribution

It introduces a model with internal beam splitters to analyze backscattering effects on the HOMM in MRRs, showing robustness and beneficial effects in non-identical resonator chains.

Findings

HOMM in MRRs is highly robust against backscattering.

Small backscattering can make non-identical MRRs behave like identical ones.

Backscattering can be beneficial for certain resonator configurations.

Abstract

We investigate the effect of backscattering on the Hong-Ou-Mandel manifold (HOMM) that manifests in double-bus mircoring resonators (MRRs). The HOMM represents higher-dimensional parameter solutions for the complete destructive interference of coincident detection in the HOM effect. To model the backscattering, we introduce a set of internal `beam splitters' inside the ring that allow photons to `reflect' into new counter-propagating modes inside the MRR. We find that the one-dimensional HOMM in MRRs investigated here is extremely robust against deterioration due to backscattering, even in a linear chain of identical MRRs. Further we find that a small amount of backscattering introduced into a chain of non-identical MRRs connected in parallel could be desirable, causing them to behave more like chain of identical MRRs.