Photonic Bound State in the Continuum for Strong Light-matter Interaction

The photonic bound state in the continuum (BIC) is discovered in a hybrid photonic circuit with low refractive index waveguide on a high refractive index thin membrane, where the optical dissipation is forbidden because of the destructive interference of different leakage channels. Based on the photonic BIC, the low mode area in a hybrid waveguide and high quality factor in a microresonator can be applied to enhance the light-matter interaction. Taking the fabrication-friendly polymer structure on diamond membrane as an example, those excellent optical performances can exist in a wide range of structure parameters with large fabrication tolerance and induce the strong coupling between photon and nitrogen-vacancy center in the diamond for scalable quantum information processors and networks. Such a fabrication-friendly structure with photonic BIC is also very promising in laser, nonlinear optical and quantum optical applications.