arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Shanhui Fan.
We study stimulated emission from an excited two-level atom coupled to a waveguide containing an incident single-photon pulse. We show that the strong photon correlation, as induced by the atom, plays a very important role in stimulated emission. Additionally, the temporal duration of the incident photon pulse is shown to have a marked effect on stimulated emission and atomic lifetime.
We show how to calculate the first- and second-order statistics of the scattered fields for an arbitrary intensity coherent state light field interacting with a two-level system in a waveguide geometry. Specifically, we calculate the resonance fluorescence from the qubit, using input-output formalism. We derive the transmission and reflection coefficients, and illustrate the bunching and anti-bunching of light that is scattered in the forward and backward directions, respectively. Our results agree with previous calculations on one- and two-photon scattering as well as those that are based on the master equation approach.
We calculate the one- and two-photon scattering matrices of a pair of collocated non-identical two-level atoms coupled to a waveguide. We show that by proper choice of a two-photon input, the background fluorescence by the atoms may be completely quenched, as a result of quantum interference, and that when the atoms' detuning is smaller than their linewidths, extremely narrow fluorescence features emerge. Furthermore, the system emits a two-photon bound state which can display spatial oscillations/quantum beats, and can be tuned from bunched to anti-bunched statistics as the total photon energy is varied.
We create a non-magnetic CMOS-compatible optical isolator on a silicon chip. The isolator is based on indirect interband photonic transition, induced by electrically-driven dynamic refractive index modulation. We demonstrate an electrically-induced non-reciprocity: the transmission coefficients between two single-mode waveguides become dependent on the propagation directions only in the presence of the electrical drive. The contrast ratio between forward and backward directions exceeds 30dB in simulations. We experimentally observe a strong contrast (up to 3 dB) limited only by our electrical setup, for a continuous-wave (CW) optical signal. Importantly, the device is linear with respect to signal light. The observed contrast ratio is independent of the timing, the format, the amplitude and the phase of the input signal.
We show that the novel one-way photonic modal conversion effect, as demonstrated by Feng et al (Reports, 11 August, 2011, p. 729), is insufficient in itself to enable optical isolation, since the underlying dielectric structure possesses a symmetric scattering matrix. Moreover, one cannot construct an optical isolator, by enclosing this structure with a system containing any combination of components or signal processing elements, as long as the overall system is linear, and is described by a static scalar dielectric function. Instead, to achieve complete optical isolation, one would need to augment the present design so that the final system is described by a non-symmetric scattering matrix.
Near-field electromagnetic heat transfer holds great potential for the advancement of nanotechnology. Whereas far-field electromagnetic heat transfer is constrained by Planck's blackbody limit, the increased density of states in the near-field enhances heat transfer rates by orders of magnitude relative to the conventional limit. Such enhancement opens new possibilities in numerous applications, including thermal-photo-voltaics, nano-patterning, and imaging. The advancement in this area, however, has been hampered by the lack of rigorous theoretical treatment, especially for geometries that are of direct experimental relevance. Here we introduce an efficient computational strategy, and present the first rigorous calculation of electromagnetic heat transfer in a sphere-plate geometry, the only geometry where transfer rate beyond blackbody limit has been quantitatively probed at room temperature. Our approach results in a definitive picture unifying various approximations previously used to treat this problem, and provides new physical insights for designing experiments aiming to explore enhanced thermal transfer.
We extend the input-output formalism of quantum optics to analyze few-photon transport in waveguides with an embedded qubit. We provide explicit analytical derivations for one and two-photon scattering matrix elements based on operator equations in the Heisenberg picture.
Light trapping for solar cells can reduce production cost and improve energy conversion efficiency. Understanding some of the basic theoretical constraints on light trapping is therefore of fundamental importance. Here, we develop a general angular constraint on the absorption enhancement in light trapping. We show that there is an upper limit for the angular integration of absorption enhancement factors. This limit is determined by the number of accessible resonances supported by an absorber.
We consider a system where a waveguide is coupled to a cavity embedded with a two-level system (TLS), and study the effects when a two-photon quantum state is injected into the waveguide. The wave function of two outgoing photons is exactly solved using the Lehmann-Symanzik-Zimmermann (LSZ) reduction formalism. Our results explicitly exhibit the photon blockade effects in the strong atom-cavity coupling regime. The quantum statistical characters of the outgoing photons, including the photon bunching and anti-bunching behaviors, are also investigated in both the strong and weak coupling regimes. These results agree with the observations of recent experiments.
We develop a general perturbation theory to treat small parameter changes in dispersive plasmonic nanostructures and metamaterials. We specifically apply it to dielectric refractive index, and metallic plasma frequency modulation in metal- dielectric nanostructures. As a numerical demonstration, we verify the theory's accu- racy against direct calculations, for a system of plasmonic rods in air where the metal is defined by a two-pole fit of silver's dielectric function. We also discuss new optical behavior related to plasma frequency modulation in such systems. Our approach provides new physical insight for the design of plasmonic devices for biochemical sensing and optical modulation, and future active metamaterial applications.
We consider coherent thermal conductance through multilayer photonic crystal heterostructures, consisting of a series of cascaded non-identical photonic crystals. We show that thermal conductance can be suppressed exponentially with the number of cascaded crystals, due to the mismatch between photonic bands of all crystals in the heterostructure.
We use a rigorous electromagnetic approach to analyze the fundamental limit of light-trapping enhancement in grating structures. This limit can exceed the bulk limit of 4n^2, but has significant angular dependency. We explicitly show that 2D gratings provide more enhancement than 1D gratings. We also show the effects of the grating profile's symmetry on the absorption enhancement limit. Numerical simulations are applied to support the theory. Our findings provide general guidance for the design of grating structures for light-trapping solar cells.
Establishing the fundamental limit of nanophotonic light-trapping schemes is of paramount importance and is becoming increasingly urgent for current solar cell research. The standard theory of light trapping demonstrated that absorption enhancement in a medium cannot exceed a factor of 4n^2/ sin^2(θ), where n is the refractive index of the active layer, and θ is the angle of the emission cone in the medium surrounding the cell. This theory, however, is not applicable in the nanophotonic regime. Here we develop a statistical temporal coupled-mode theory of light trapping based on a rigorous electromagnetic approach. Our theory reveals that the standard limit can be substantially surpassed when optical modes in the active layer are confined to deep-subwavelength scale, opening new avenues for highly efficient next-generation solar cells.
Relativistic electrons in a structured medium generate radiative losses such as Cherenkov and transition radiation that act as a virtual light source, coupling to the photonic densities of states. The effect is most pronounced when the imaginary part of the dielectric function is zero, a regime where in a non-retarded treatment no loss or coupling can occur. Maps of the resultant energy losses as a sub-5nm electron probe scans across finite waveguide structures reveal spatial distributions of optical modes in a spectral domain ranging from near-infrared to far ultraviolet.
We present a theory for Fano interference in light scattering by individual obstacle, based on a temporal coupled-mode formalism. This theory is applicable for obstacles that are much smaller than the incident wavelength, or for systems with two-dimensional cylindrical or three-dimensional spherical symmetry. We show that for each angle momentum channel, the Fano interference effect can be modeled by a simple temporal coupled-mode equation, which provides a line shape formula for scattering and absorption cross-section. We validate the analysis with numerical simulations. As an application of the theory, we design a structure that exhibits strong absorption and weak scattering properties at the same frequency.
We analyze the single-photon transport in a single-mode waveguide coupled to a whispering-gallery-type resonator interacting with a two-level atom. The single-photon transport properties such as the transmission and reflection amplitudes, as well as the resonator and the atom responses, are solved exactly via a real-space approach. The treatment includes the inter-mode backscattering between the two degenerate whispering gallery modes of the resonator, and the dissipations of the resonator and the atom. We also show that a generalized critical coupling condition, that the single-photon transmission at the output of the waveguide goes to zero on resonance for a matched system, holds for the full coupled waveguide-ring resonator-atom system.
The single-photon transport in a single-mode waveguide, coupled to a cavity embedded with a two-leval atom is analyzed. The single-photon transmission and reflection amplitudes, as well as the cavity and the atom excitation amplitudes, are solved exactly via a real-space approach. It is shown that the dissipation of the cavity and of the atom respectively affects distinctively on the transport properties of the photons, and on the relative phase between the excitation amplitudes of the cavity mode and the atom.
This paper shows how to analyze plasmonic metal-insulator-metal waveguides using the full modal structure of these guides. The analysis applies to all frequencies, particularly including the near infrared and visible spectrum, and to a wide range of sizes, including nanometallic structures. We use the approach here specifically to analyze waveguide junctions. We show that the full modal structure of the metal-insulator-metal (MIM) waveguides--which consists of real and complex discrete eigenvalue spectra, as well as the continuous spectrum--forms a complete basis set. We provide the derivation of these modes using the techniques developed for Sturm-Liouville and generalized eigenvalue equations. We demonstrate the need to include all parts of the spectrum to have a complete set of basis vectors to describe scattering within MIM waveguides with the mode-matching technique. We numerically compare the mode-matching formulation with finite-difference frequency-domain analysis and find very good agreement between the two for modal scattering at symmetric MIM waveguide junctions. We touch upon the similarities between the underlying mathematical structure of the MIM waveguide and the PT symmetric quantum mechanical pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonians. The rich set of modes that the MIM waveguide supports forms a canonical example against which other more complicated geometries can be compared. Our work here encompasses the microwave results, but extends also to waveguides with real metals even at infrared and optical frequencies.