On-Chip Fabrication-Tolerant Exceptional Points Based on Dual-Scatterer Engineering

Nano Lett. 2024 Apr 3;24(13):3906-3913. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c05075. Epub 2024 Mar 20.

Abstract

The intriguing and anomalous optical characteristics of exceptional points (EPs) in optical resonators have attracted significant attention. While EP-related phenomena have been observed by perturbing resonators with off-chip components, implementing EPs fully on-chip remains challenging due to their extreme susceptibility to fabrication errors. In this Letter, we propose a succinct and compact approach to reach EP in an on-chip integrated silicon microring resonator by manipulating the evolution of backscatterings with two nanocylinders of disparate diameters. The theoretical analysis unveils that the fabrication constraints could be significantly relieved by increasing the difference in diameters of the nanocylinders. The evolution from non-EP to EP is traced experimentally through the step-by-step tuning of the angular and radial positions of nanocylinders. The proposed method opens a pathway toward the on-chip high-density integration of non-Hermitian devices.

Keywords: backscattering; exceptional point; fabrication constraints; on-chip microring.