First-principles method for high-Q photonic crystal cavity mode calculations.

Area of Science:

• Photonics
• Computational Physics
• Materials Science

Background:

• Photonic crystal cavities are crucial for light manipulation.
• Calculating their radiation properties is computationally intensive.
• Existing methods limit the design and analysis of these cavities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel, rapid method for computing photonic crystal cavity radiation properties.
• To enable faster design and analysis of ultra-high quality factor cavities.
• To elucidate the relationship between cavity design and radiation characteristics.

Main Methods:

• Developed a first-principles computational method named Frequency-domain Approach for Radiation (FAR).
• FAR computes far-field radiation patterns and quality factors.
• FAR achieves speeds approximately 100 times faster than traditional finite-difference time-domain methods.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated the computational efficiency of the FAR method.
• Successfully computed radiation properties of ultra-high quality factor photonic crystal cavities.
• Established the dependence of the radiation pattern on cavity perturbation and Bloch modes.

Conclusions:

• The FAR method offers a significant speedup for calculating photonic crystal cavity radiation properties.
• This method facilitates the design and optimization of advanced photonic devices.
• Understanding the influence of perturbations and Bloch modes is key to controlling radiation.