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Full-Text Articles in Optics

Fabricating Nanophotonic Devices Using Nanofabrication Techniques, Scott Cummings Dec 2021

Fabricating Nanophotonic Devices Using Nanofabrication Techniques, Scott Cummings

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Nanofabrication processes are widely used to make the integrated circuits and computer chips that are ubiquitous in today’s technology. These fabrication processes can also be applied to the creation of nanophotonic devices. The ways in which we apply these fabrication techniques in the field of photonics is often constrained by the technologies used for electronics manufacturing which presents an interesting engineering challenge. These limitations include availability and cost of certain fabrication equipment and techniques required to create state-of-the-art nanophotonic devices. Through work with the University of California Irvine nano-fabrication cleanroom, we designed and fabricated various integrated photonic components including grating …


Microspheres With Atomic-Scale Tolerances Generate Hyperdegeneracy, Jacob Kher-Alden, Shai Maayani, Leopoldo L. Martin, Mark Douvidzon, Lev Deych, Tal Carmon Jan 2020

Microspheres With Atomic-Scale Tolerances Generate Hyperdegeneracy, Jacob Kher-Alden, Shai Maayani, Leopoldo L. Martin, Mark Douvidzon, Lev Deych, Tal Carmon

Publications and Research

Degeneracies play a crucial rule in precise scientific measurements as well as in sensing applications. Spherical resonators have a high degree of degeneracy thanks to their highest symmetry; yet, fabricating perfect spheres is challenging because even a stem to hold the sphere breaks the symmetry. Here we fabricate a levitating spherical resonator that is evanescently coupled to a standard optical fiber. We characterize the resonators to exhibit an optical quality factor exceeding a billion, 10 μm radius, and sphericity to within less than 1µ. Using our high quality and sphericity, we experimentally lift degeneracies of orders higher than 200, which …


Slow Light With Interleaved P-N Junction To Enhance Performance Of Integrated Mach-Zehnder Silicon Modulators, Marco Passoni, Dario Gerace, Liam O'Faolain, Lucio Claudio Andreani May 2019

Slow Light With Interleaved P-N Junction To Enhance Performance Of Integrated Mach-Zehnder Silicon Modulators, Marco Passoni, Dario Gerace, Liam O'Faolain, Lucio Claudio Andreani

Cappa Publications

Slow light is a very important concept in nanophotonics, especially in the context of photonic crystals. In this work, we apply our previous design of band-edge slow light in silicon waveguide gratings [M. Passoni et al, Opt. Express 26, 8470 (2018)] to Mach-Zehnder modulators based on the plasma dispersion effect. The key idea is to employ an interleaved p-n junction with the same periodicity as the grating, in order to achieve optimal matching between the electromagnetic field profile and the depletion regions of the p-n junction. The resulting modulation efficiency is strongly improved as compared to common modulators based on …


Effects Of Fabrication Errors On The Focusing Performance Of A Sector Metalens, S. S. Stafeev, A. G. Nalimov, Liam O’Faolain, M. V. Kotlyar Nov 2018

Effects Of Fabrication Errors On The Focusing Performance Of A Sector Metalens, S. S. Stafeev, A. G. Nalimov, Liam O’Faolain, M. V. Kotlyar

Cappa Publications

Using e-beam lithography, a 16-sector spiral metalens was fabricated in an amorphous silicon, capable of converting linearly polarized incident light into an azimuthally polarized optical vortex. When illuminated by a 633-nm linearly polarized laser beam, the metalens generated a near-surface subwavelength focal spot equal to 0.75 of the incident wavelength at full-width of half-maximum intensity. The focusing performance of the spiral metalens was numerically shown to be sensitive to the deviation of the factual microrelief from the calculated height. For the designed microrelief height, a circularly polarized incident beam was focused into a bright ring with a reverse energy flow …