Control Over Fano Parameter in Grating and One-Dimensional Photonic Crystal Cavity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates dynamic control of Fano resonances in a silicon photonic crystal cavity, enabling post-fabrication optimization for sensing and modulation through thermos-optic tuning.

Contribution

The authors introduce a method to actively tune the Fano asymmetric parameter in a silicon photonic crystal cavity using thermos-optic effects, achieving significant spectral slope and extinction ratio improvements.

Findings

Fano parameter tuned from -3.2 to +1.7

Achieved extinction ratio of 21.6 dB

Spectral slope of 108 dB/nm

Abstract

Fano resonances are sharp asymmetrical spectral peaks which are now ubiquitous in nanophotonics. The high sensitivity of these resonances to system parameter has been exploited to improve light matter interaction and in applications such as sensing, filters and on-chip processing. The ability to dynamically change the Fano slope and spectral phase would enable optimization of the device parameters post fabrication for various applications. Here we demonstrate such a control over the Fano resonance in a one-dimensional photonics crystal cavity integrated on a silicon waveguide -grating platform. In our device, Fano resonance arises due to interference between cavity mode and an oscillatory background due to grating coupler. The dynamics tuning of Fano asymmetric parameter is achieved using thermos-optic effect in silicon. We experimentally tune the Fano parameter from ~-3.2 to +1.7 achieving a highest extinction ratio of 21.6 dB and spectral slope of 108dB/nm. All the above is achieved in an ultra-compact design with simple fabrication and with multiple cavities or feedback elements. The steep slope offers distinct advantage over conventional cavity for sensing and modulation applications and the tunability enables dynamic control over gain, dynamic range, bandwidth and noise coupling.