Harnessing bound states in the continuum for quantum and nonlinear photonics in silicon nitride microresonators

Abstract

In this work we theoretically and experimentally investigate bound states in the continuum (BICs) in a reconfigurable integrated photonic structure, focusing on spontaneous four-wave mixing. We consider a configuration in which only one mode, the idler, is tuned to the BIC condition, and show that suppressing the radiative loss of this single mode profoundly reshapes the overall nonlinear dynamics. In particularly, we realize electrically tunable Friedrich-Wintgen BICs with Q > 10^6 in an interferometrically coupled silicon-nitride microresonator. Although inaccessible through linear excitation, the BIC is populated by four-wave mixing and read out through its radiative photon partner. In the low-gain regime, we investigate the spectral, correlation, and coherence properties of the generated photon pairs, revealing distinctive signatures in the signal-idler correlations and an extracted signal whose coherence time approaches the intrinsic-loss-limited lifetime of the dark idler. In the high-gain regime, making one mode participating in optical parametric amplification a BIC enhances the parametric gain by 12 dB and lowers the oscillation threshold by 1.6 dB. These results establish BICs as a tool for mode-selective lifetime engineering, enabling control over both biphoton wavepackets and the threshold dynamics of integrated parametric devices.