Photonic Doping of Epsilon-Near-Zero Bragg Microcavities

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates optical-frequency photonic doping in low-loss ENZ microcavities, enabling ultra-narrowband resonances, enhanced magnetic interactions, and new applications in spectroscopy, lasing, and quantum optics.

Contribution

It introduces a low-loss, all-dielectric platform for photonic doping at optical frequencies using Bragg microcavities with embedded dielectric resonators, expanding the concept beyond microwave regimes.

Findings

Achieved near-zero-index dispersion with high quality factors (~10^4).

Observed magnetic-dipole Purcell enhancements over 5000.

Supported spectrally isolated, quasi-singular coupled resonances.

Abstract

Epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) photonics provides a powerful route to extreme dispersion engineering, strong field confinement, and unconventional wave phenomena. A closely related concept is \textit{photonic doping}, where subwavelength nonmagnetic dielectric materials embedded in ENZ media enable exotic responses such as perfect-magnetic-conductor behavior and simultaneous epsilon- and mu-near-zero states. However, photonic doping has remained limited to microwave and far-infrared regimes due to the intrinsic losses of optical ENZ materials. Here, photonic doping is demonstrated at optical frequencies by embedding a periodic array of dielectric Mie resonators into an ultralow-loss, all-dielectric ENZ platform based on near-cutoff Bragg microcavities. The resulting structures support spectrally isolated, quasi-singular coupled Bragg--Mie resonances spanning electric and magnetic multipolar orders and their overtones. These modes exhibit effective near-zero-index dispersion with fields confined either within or between the nanoparticles. A representative \(14\,\mu\mathrm{m}\)-scale doped structure exhibits quality factors approaching \(10^{4}\) and magnetic-dipole Purcell enhancements exceeding \(5\times10^{3}\) in the near-infrared. The demonstrated platform elevates the photonic doping from a microwave-only concept to a fully optical, low-loss, and multipole-resolved platform, enabling ultra-narrowband Mie-like resonances, enhanced magnetic-light interactions, and new opportunities in multipolar-selective spectroscopy and lasing, low-threshold nonlinear optics and efficient single-photon emission.