Phase-dependent Supermode Excitation in Photonic Molecules

Abstract

A photonic molecule (PM) is a miniature diffractive optical structure composed of resonance microcavities called atoms (e.g., cylinders or spheres) supporting a set of high-quality eigenmodes. All atoms in a PM are coupled by the electromagnetic fields of eigenmodes, which form collective supermodes of the whole PM. We consider a particular type of mirror-symmetric PMs being optically excited simultaneously via two light channels (tapered fibers). Based on the numerical simulations, we show that the spectral composition of supermodes in such PM can be effectively manipulated by changing the phase detuning between the optical channels. For a seven-atom silicon microcylinder cyclic-PM is demonstrated the possibility to achieve tenfold intensity amplification/suppression of several supermodes from the Stokes and anti-Stokes bands of PM spectrum.