The spontaneous breaking of mirror-symmetry in two coupled photonic crystal nanocavity-lasers is experimentally demonstrated. The inter-cavity evanescent coupling is tuned such that the nonlinear interaction –the carrier-induced nanolaser frequency shift– overcomes photon tunneling. This, together with the optimization of the nanocavity beaming, allows us to observe a spontaneous transition from a delocalized mode to two spatially localized states, in the form of a pitchfork bifurcation. Coexistence of these states is demonstrated through short pulse excitation. This kind of devices based on symmetry breaking could yield new types of flip-flop memories and nanolaser sources with strong photonic correlations.

Date Published: 9 November 2016
PDF: 1 pages
Proc. SPIE 9920, Active Photonic Materials VIII, 99200C (9 November 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2236291

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9920:
Active Photonic Materials VIII
Ganapathi S. Subramania; Stavroula Foteinopoulou, Editor(s)