Directional Emission from an Optical Microdisk Resonator with a Point Scatterer

Abstract

We present a new design of dielectric microcavities supporting modes with large quality factors and highly directional light emission. The key idea is to place a point scatterer inside a dielectric circular microdisk. We show that, depending on the position and strength of the scatterer, this leads to strongly directional modes in various frequency regions while preserving the high Q-factors reminiscent of the whispering gallery modes of the microdisk without scatterer. The design is very appealing due to its simplicity, promising a cleaner experimental realisation than previously studied microcavity designs on the one hand and analytic tractability based on Green's function techniques and self-adjoint extension theory on the other.