Twisted lattice nanocavity with theoretical quality factor exceeding 200 billion
Ren‐Min Ma, Hong-Yi Luan, Ziwei Zhao, Wen-Zhi Mao, Shaolei Wang, Yun-Hao Ouyang, Zengkai Shao
Abstract
Simultaneous localization of light to extreme spatial and spectral scales is of high importance for testing fundamental physics and various applications. However, there is a longstanding trade-off between localizing a light field in space and in frequency. Here we discover a new class of twisted lattice nanocavities based on mode locking in momentum space. The twisted lattice nanocavity hosts a strongly localized light field in a 0.048 λ3 mode volume with a quality factor exceeding 2.9 × 1011 (∼250 μs photon lifetime), which presents a record high figure of merit of light localization among all reported optical cavities. Based on the discovery, we have demonstrated silicon-based twisted lattice nanocavities with quality factor over 1 million. Our result provides a powerful platform to study light-matter interaction in extreme conditions for tests of fundamental physics and applications in nanolasing, ultrasensing, nonlinear optics, optomechanics and quantum-optical devices.