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Su-Hyun Gong

Publications and source records attributed to Su-Hyun Gong.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

Critically coupled zeroth-order resonance for ultrathin nonlinear photonics

Ultrathin active materials are essential for compact nonlinear and quantum photonic devices, yet no general principle exists to link their optical constants to the cavity designs required for simultaneous field buildup and reflection suppression. Consequently, achieving extreme optical confinement currently relies on trial-and-error optimization for every new material. Here, we establish a design rule for metal-backed cavities that maximizes light-matter interaction by ensuring the simultaneous satisfaction of zeroth-order resonance and critical coupling. We derive a closed-form analytical condition that partitions the (n, k) plane into critically coupled, over-coupled, and under-coupled regimes, each mapping to a specific minimal architecture. The critical curve admits a three-layer open cavity, the over-coupled region a closed cavity with a semi-transparent top mirror, and the under-coupled region a spacer-assisted geometry. For low-loss materials, the closed cavity spatially separates dissipation from field accumulation, allowing the quality factor to be controlled by the external mirror rather than intrinsic medium absorption. We validate this framework with 3R-MoS2, demonstrating a second-harmonic enhancement of 1.19 x 10^5 relative to a monolayer, accompanied by the near-complete suppression of reflected pump waves. These results provide a universal framework for efficient light-matter interaction in ultrathin nonlinear and quantum photonics.

physics.optics

Strong interlayer coupling and chiral flat-band cascades in twisted bilayer gratings

From atomic crystals to macroscopic material structures, twisted bilayer systems have emerged as a promising route to control wave phenomena. In few-layer van der Waals (vdW) materials, however, the intrinsically weak interlayer coupling typically demands fine control of small twist angles to reach magic-angle conditions. Here, we show that one-dimensional photonic crystal bilayers can overcome this limitation by accessing a regime of strong interlayer coupling -- comparable to intralayer coupling. This strong coupling enables flat-band formation over a broad angular range even at large twist angles. We experimentally realize this regime by stacking WS$_2$ gratings using a two-step lithography method, resulting in ultra-wide chiral flat-band cascades in magic-angle twisted bilayer gratings. Our work not only provides a platform for designing photonic applications with tunable localization but also explores a new regime of physics unattainable in conventional solid-state based moiré systems.

physics.optics

Direct Transfer of Light's Orbital Angular Momentum onto Non-resonantly Excited Polariton Superfluid

Recently, exciton-polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity were found to condense into a coherent ground state much like a Bose-Einstein condensate and a superfluid. They have become a unique testbed for generating and manipulating quantum vortices in a driven-dissipative superfluid. Here, we generate exciton-polariton condensate with non-resonant Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) optical beam and verify the direct transfer of light's orbital angular momentum to exciton-polariton quantum fluid. Quantized vortices are found in spite of large energy relaxation involved in non-resonant pumping. We identified phase singularity, density distribution and energy eigenstates for the vortex states. Our observations confirm that non-resonant optical LG beam can be used to manipulate chirality, topological charge, and stability of non-equilibrium quantum fluid. These vortices are quite robust, only sensitive to the OAM of light and not other parameters such as energy, intensity, size or shape of the pump beam. Therefore, optical information can be transferred between photon and exciton-polariton with ease and the technique is potentially useful to form the controllable network of multiple topological charges even in the presence of spectral randomness in solid state system.

cond-mat.quant-gas

Nanoscale chiral valley-photon interface through optical spin-orbit coupling

The emergence of two-dimensional transition metal chalcogenide materials has sparked an intense activity in valleytronics since their valley information can be directly encoded and detected by using the spin angular momentum of light. For their practical applications such as on-chip valley logic gates and chip-to-chip valley transport, the encoding and processing of valley pseudospin using light should be extended to an integrated, on-chip nanophotonic system. Here, we successfully demonstrate, at room temperature, the valley-dependent directional coupling of light using a plasmonic nanowire-WS2 layers system. Our calculations show that the local transverse spin angular momentum of the mode of the plasmonic nanowire provides robust optical spin-path locking of up to 91 %. Experimentally we demonstrate that valley pseudospin in WS2 is coupled with optical spin of the same handedness and exhibits a high directional coupling efficiency up to 90 % to the plasmonic guided mode. The result opens up new avenues of controlling, detecting and processing valley and spin information with precise optical control at the nanoscale.

physics.optics