Achievement of ultrahigh quality factors in GaAs photonic crystal membrane nanocavity

Evelin Weidner (1) , Sylvain Combrié (1) , Nguyen-Vi-Quynh Tran (1) , Alfredo de Rossi (1) , Julien Nagle (1) , Simone Cassette (1) , Anne Talneau (2) , Henri Benisty (3)

1 Thales Research and Technology [Palaiseau]
2 LPN - Laboratoire de photonique et de nanostructures
3 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Naphel

The authors realized an ultrahigh quality factor nanocavity in a GaAs membrane with the highest loaded Q reported to date of 250 000 in a side-coupled cavity-waveguide system. This result could be obtained using an original aluminum-free material system combined with a carefully adjusted fabrication technology, yielding a device with small roughness and very good verticality of holes as well as small disorder. The authors show that the intrinsic Q factor is around 3.0x105 using a coupled-mode model.

Domains: Optics [physics.optics]

Evelin Weidner, Sylvain Combrié, Nguyen-Vi-Quynh Tran, Alfredo de Rossi, Julien Nagle, et al.. Achievement of ultrahigh quality factors in GaAs photonic crystal membrane nanocavity. Applied Physics Letters, 2006, 89 (22), pp.221104. ⟨10.1063/1.2390648⟩. ⟨hal-00869911⟩