State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, School of Physics, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China.
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication System and Networks, School of Electronics and Frontiers Science Center for Nano-optoelectronics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Sci Adv. 2022 Dec 23;8(51):eade8817. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.ade8817.
The pursuit of compact lasers with low thresholds has imposed strict requirements on tight light confinements with minimized radiation losses. Bound states in the continuum (BICs) have been recently demonstrated as an effective mechanism to trap light. However, most reported BIC lasers are still bulky due to the absence of in-plane light confinement. Here, we combine BICs and photonic bandgaps to realize three-dimensional light confinements, as referred to miniaturized BICs (mini-BICs). We demonstrate highly compact active mini-BIC resonators with a record high-quality () factor of up to 32,500, which enables single-mode lasing with the lowest threshold of 80 W/cm among the reported BIC lasers. In addition, photon statistics measurements further confirm the occurrence of the stimulated emission in our devices. Our work reveals a path toward compact BIC lasers with ultralow power consumption and potentially boosts the applications in cavity quantum electrodynamics, nonlinear optics, and integrated photonics.
追求低阈值的紧凑型激光器对具有最小辐射损耗的紧密光限制提出了严格的要求。连续体中的束缚态（BIC）最近被证明是一种有效的光陷机制。然而，由于缺乏面内光限制，大多数报道的 BIC 激光器仍然体积庞大。在这里，我们结合 BIC 和光子能带隙来实现三维光限制，即小型化 BIC（mini-BIC）。我们展示了具有创纪录的高品质因子（高达 32500）的高度紧凑的有源 mini-BIC 谐振器，在报道的 BIC 激光器中，其最低阈值可低至 80 W/cm，实现单模激射。此外，光子统计测量进一步证实了我们器件中受激发射的发生。我们的工作揭示了一种实现超低功耗紧凑型 BIC 激光器的途径，并有可能推动腔量子电动力学、非线性光学和集成光子学领域的应用。
