Relationship between total reflection and Fabry-Perot bound states in the continuum

Abstract

Bound states in the continuum (BICs) have interesting properties and important applications in photonics. A particular class of BICs are found in Fabry-Perot (FP) cavities formed by two parallel periodic dielectric layers separated by a distance $h$. A periodic dielectric layer can totally reflect a plane incident wave with a particular frequency and a particular wavenumber. Existing FP-BICs are found when $h$ is close to the values deduced from a phase-matching condition related to the reflection coefficient, but they are obtained in FP-cavities where the periodic layers have a reflection symmetry in the periodic direction. In this paper, we further clarify the connection between total reflections and FP-BICs. Our numerical results indicate that if the wavenumber is zero or the periodic layers have a reflection symmetry in the periodic direction, FP-BICs can indeed be found near the parameters of total reflections. However, if the wavenumber is nonzero and the periodic layer is asymmetric (in the periodic direction), we are unable to find a FP-BIC (with a frequency and a wavenumber near those of a total reflection) by tuning $h$ or other structural parameters. Consequently, a total reflection does not always lead to a FP-BIC even when the parameters of the FP-cavity are tuned.