Design of a Ultrahigh-Q Hybrid Nanocavity on a

Multiheterostructure Photonic Crystal

Ashfaqul Anwar Siraji, Student Member, IEEE and M. Shah Alam, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractWe designed an ultrahigh-Q hybrid cavity based on

the concept of multiheterostructure and space modulation. First
we demonstrated an analytical method of designing the desired
multiheterostructure and then applied space modulation to form
the hybrid cavity. We studied the confinement mechanism of the
hybrid cavity for different extent of the space modulation and
calculated the resonant characteristics of the cavity using finite
difference time domain method. We found that the hybrid cavity
can sustain two different modes using two different confining
mechanism with similar Q. We also investigated the disorder
stability of the cavity and demonstrated that both the modes of
the hybrid cavity are equally insensitive to position disorder.
Index TermsIEEEtran, journal, LATEX, paper, template.

I. I NTRODUCTION
Formation of nanocavities with very high quality factor
(Q) utilizing photonic crystal (PC) double heterostructure
(DH) has been on the spotlight for the past decade. This
is because DH nanocavities can be easily incorporated into
planar photonic circuits and, unlike defect based cavities,
these types of cavities are relatively insensitive to fabrication
errors. Generally, DH nanocavities are formed by perturbing
the photonic crystal lattice in a strip like region within
which the resonant mode remains confined. Welna et al. has
demonstrated a DH cavity with improved disorder stability by
engineering the dispersion of a PC line-defect waveguide [1].
Mock et al. has demonstrated a DH cavity with two additional
airholes within the line defect [2]. We have demonstrated
a tunable nanocavity based on rectangular lattice that can
sustain both TE and TM mode [3]. Kuramochi et al. has
designed a DH cavity by localy modulating the width of a
line defect [4]. Recently, several ultrahigh Q nanocavities have
been demonstrated that take the idea of double heterostructure
one step further and employ several photonic crystals with
gradually perturbed lattice, forming a multiheterostructure.
Cheng et al. has demonstrated PC cavity in GaN bulk using
four successive heterostructure. Tanaka et al. has demonstrated
a PC cavity which uses many successive heterostructures
to confine the resonant mode as gently as possible, which
led to very high Q [5]. In such multiheterostructure (MHT)
nanocavities, the confinement along the line defect is carefully
controlled to ensure gentle confinement. However, along the
direction perpendicular to the waveguide, the confinement
remains abrupt.
The manuscript has been recieved on ...
Ashfaqul Anwar Siraji and M. Shah Alam are with the Department
of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh (e-mails: aasiraji100@yahoo.com; shalam@eee.buet.ac.bd)

In this work, we propose a hybrid nanocavity which utilizes

the concept of multiheteostructure [5] and space modulation
[6]. By using MHT along the waveguide, a Gaussian envelope
for the resonant mode was obtained, whereas the confinement
in the perpendicular direction is softened by space modulation.
We use two dimensional(2D) finite difference time domain
method (FDTD) with perfectly matched layer (PML) boundary
conditions to simulate the designed structure and calculate the
resonant properties. In the 2D geometry, we study the TE
modes. The effect of space modulation on the MHT nanocavity
is studied by varying the extant of modulation. To elucidate
the effect of space modulation on the confinement mechanism,
the spatial fourier transform (SFT) of the resonant modes are
used. Furthermore, we study the impact of position disorder
on the hybrid cavity by calculating the resonant wavelengths
with added random position disorder.
II. D ESIGN AND V ERIFICATION
We first design the MHT PC based on the workflow
presented in [5]. Although Tanaka et al. performed their
calculation in case of index guiding, the principle remains
equally valid incase of bandgap guiding. We start with a line
defect waveguide corresponding to a row of missing hole in
a hexagonal lattice PC with lattice constant a, airhole radius
r = 0.35 a as shown in Fig. 1(a). The background material
is assumed to be Silicon (n = 3.4). The dispersion curve,
calculated using 2D FDTD, is plotted against the real part
of the wavevector along the waveguide (kx ) in Fig. 1(b).
The slope of this curve near the mode-edge is almost zero,
indicating bandgap guiding as opposed to index guiding. The
dispersion curve is fitted by a Taylor series expansion of the
term (k 0.5), where k = kx . The fitted curve (as displyed
in Fig. 1(b)) can be expressed as:
f = 0.2257 + 0.1541(k 0.5)2 + 0.7048(k 0.5)4 ,

(1)

where f is the frequency of the guided mode. Since the

guiding mechanism of the waveguide is bandgap guiding,
the dispersion is not quadratic unlike that presented in [5].
We consider terms upto the fourth power, since the fit is
sufficiently close without terms of higher order. By substituting
k = 0.5 + iq in (1), we can obtain the complex dispersion
relation in the bandgap region.
f = 0.2257 0.1541q 2 + 0.7048q 4 ,

(2)

where q is the imaginary part of the wavevector. Now, to obtain

a Gaussian resonant mode profile, the condition on q is q =
Bx, where B is an arbitrary constant. From eq. (2), we obtain
fcut f = 0.1541B 2 x2 0.7048B 4 x4 .

(3)

TABLE I
C OMPARISON OF QUALITY FACTOR OF THE MHT

NANOCAVITY WITH
PREVIOUSLY REPORTED VALUES .

(a)

Reference

Material

In plane Quality Factor

Makarova et al. [8]

Kim et al. [9]
Mock et al. [2]
Siraji et al. [3]
This work

Si
GaN
Si
BaT iO3
Si

396
550
3.37 105
2800
9 104

(b)

Fig. 1. (a) The structure of a hexagonal lattice photonic crystal waveguide

formed by a row of missing holes.(b)The dispersion curve of the PC
waveguide.

Here, fcut is the cutoff frequency of the waveguide and f is the

resonant frequency of the cavity. Since the resonant frequency
of the cavity should be constant, the x dependent term in eq.
(3) is fcut (x). Thus, fcut is different in different regions of the
PC. Now, the cutoff frequency and and lattice constant of a PC
(x)
a(0)
is inversely proportional to each other. Hence, ffcut
= a(x)
,
cut (0)
where fcut (0) = 0.2257( ac ) is the cutoff frequency at x = 0
(central region of the MHT) and a(0) is the lattice constant
in the same region. The bound states of a cavity form near
the stationary points of the dispersion curve [7]. Hence, we
can assume that the resonant frequency of the cavity will be
close to f = fcut (0). Furthermore, assuming small change in
the lattice constant (n) and two periods per PC, the distance
(xn ) of the of the nth PC from the center of the MHT is
xn = (2n + 0.5)a0 . Thus, from eq. (3), we obtain
an =

a0 fcut (0)
2
2
.154B a0 (2n + 12 )2

,
.705B 4 a40 (2n + 12 )4
(4)
which produces the lattice constant of the nth PC away from
the center. In eq. (4), the constant B is arbitrary. We select a
value for B such that the variation in lattice constant remains
within 4% of a0 , so that our assumption of small n remains
true.
We designed a MHT nanocavity using eq. (4) and calculated
its resonant properties using 2D FDTD with fast fourier
transform (FFT). By gradually changing the lattice constant,
the bandgap of the PC is gradually changed so that the guided
mode in the central PC of the MHT falls within the bandgap of
the successive outer PCs. The normalized impulse response of
the MHT nanocavity for TE mode is shown in Fig. 2(b). It can
be seen that the resonant peak (r ) is at a = 0.24, which is
very close to the fcut (0) = 0.2257( ac ) predicted earlier. In the
inset of Fig. 2(b), we show the decay of energy in the cavity
with respect to time when excited at the resonant frequency.
From this, we calculate the Q to be 9 104 using the method
we used earlier [3]. The resonant TE mode of the MHT, as
shown in Fig. 2(a), is much more gently confined compared
to a double heterostructure cavity. This is confirmed by the
momentum space profile of the magnetic field, which is very
sharply confined, as shown in Fig. 2(c). The quality factor
of this MHT nanocavity compares favourably with previous
literature as shown in Tbale I. The eq. (4) is designed to
produce a MHT nanocavity that has a Gaussian envelope
along the waveguide. In our designed cavity, the waveguide
is along the x axis. The magnetic field profiles of the resonant
fcut (0) +

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Fig. 2. (a) The structure of the designed MHT nanocavity. The resonant TE
mode is shown superimposed on the structure.(b) The normalized impulse
response of the MHT cavity. The decay of energy with respect to time in the
cavity when excited by the resonant frequency is shown ni the inset. (c) The
momentum space profile of the magnetic field. (d) The magnetic field of the
resonant mode along the x and z axes along with corresponding least error
fit. The rms error of fit is shown with respect to n in the inset.

TE mode along the x and z axes are shown in Fig. 2(d).

Using the formalism used in [3], we calculate the least error
fit of the envelopes of the magnetic fields using a form
n
n+1
H = e(ax +bx ) , where H is the magnetic field, n is the
performance parameter and a, b are fitting parameters. We first
determine the n that produces the least error. In the inset of
Fig. 2(d), we show the rms error in the fitting the envelopes by
the mentioned form. In Table II, the vales of fitting parameter
a and b for the values of n in case of fitting the magnetic field
profile along the x axis is given. From the table, it can be
concluded that along the x axis, the envelope of the magnetic
2
field becomes H = eax , which is the desired Gaussian
envelope. However, along the z axis, the least error fit requires
4
H = eax implying a more abrupt confinement along the z
axis.
III. F ORMING THE H YBRID C AVITY
We apply space modulation along the z axis to the airholes
immediately around the MHT nanocavity. First, we apply
space modulation to the three holes in the center PC (PC0).
Then, we apply space modulation to the two airholes immediately around the PC0(PC1). After that, we apply space

RMS

ERROR IN

TABLE II
F ITTING THE MAGNETIC

FIELD PROFILE ALONG THE X

AXIS

n+1

0
1
2
3
4

1
2
3
4
5

error

0.09058
0.08057
0.07908
0.0869
0.099

2.697 1013
4.518 107
0.09301
0.0291
0.00947

0.2924
0.09301
4.426 1011
3.812 1012
7.323 1013
(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Fig. 4. The magnetic field profiles and corresponding SFT of the resonant
TE modes when (a) PC0 is space modulated, (b) PC1 is space modulated.
When both PC0 and PC1 are space modulated, two resonant modes can be
observed. The magnetic field profiles and corresponding SFTs of the modes
a
a
at (c)
= 0.2588 and (d)
= 0.261 are shown.

Fig. 3. The normalized impulse responses of the MHT cavities formed by

applying space modulation on the PC0, PC1 and both.

modulation to both PC0 and PC1. In the Fig. 3, the normalized

impulse response of the space modulated cavity is shown
for the mentioned cases. It can be seen that the resonant
wavelength shifts from a = 0.246 to a = 0.259 with a Q
= 1.242 105 when only the PC0 is modulated. Again, the
resonant wavelength shifts from a = 0.246 to a = 0.247 with
a Q = 8.47104 when only PC1 is modulated. However, when
both PC0 and PC1 is space modulated, two resonant peaks
can be found. The peak at a = 0.261 shows Q = 1.121 105
and the peak at a = 0.2588 shows Q = 1.084 105 . In this
case, two different confinement mechanism becomes active
simultaneously, as explained in the subsequent paragraphs. As
a result, two separate resonant modes of equally high Q can
be observed.
In Fig. 4, the magnetic field profiles and corresponding
SFTs of the resonant modes in Fig. 3 are shown. It can be
seen that the mode profiles of the space modulated cavity is
much different from the unmodulated cavity. To investigate,
we observe the spatial fourier transform (SFT) of the mode
profiles shown along side the corresponding modes. The SFT
in Fig. 4(a) resembles the SFT of a donor defect cavity
demonstrated by Srinivasan et al. in [10], with spreading of
energy in wavevectors. We have mentioned previously that
the waveguide in the MHT can be thought of as a series
of line defects when viewed along the z axis. When only
PC0 is space modulated, the defects in PC0 act as a defect
cavity and the heterostructure becomes irrelevant because most
of the energy is confined within the PC0. When the PC1
is modulated, the heterostructure between the PC0 and PC1
comes into play along with the defect cavities formed in
PC1. It can be seen in Fig. 4(b) that the magnetic field
profile of the MHT cavity when PC1 is modulated contains

sharp peaks in the middle due to the defect cavity as well

as the trailing tails due to successive heterostructures. The
SFT of this magnetic field profile contains the sharp peaks
that characterizes the confinement due to multiheterostructure
and the spreading of energy that characterizes a defect cavity.
Evidently, when just PC1 is modulated, the confinement is due
to both multiheterostructure and defect. Now, when both PC0
and PC1 is modulated, two peaks in the normalized impulse
response can be observed in Fig. 3. In this case, a L7 cavity is
formed due to equal space modulation in PC0 and PC1. Again,
this same cavity can act as a MHT cavity because of presence
of successive PCs with gradually changing lattice parameter.
From Figs. 4(c) and 4(d), it can be observed that the mode
with higher wavelength shows a resonant magnetic field profile
with a much gentler confinement with a Q = 1.084 105 .
Observing the resonant field profile, it can be said that this
mode is resonant due to the presence of MHT. To verify
this, we observe the SFT of this mode which shows clear
resemblance to the one displayed in Fig. 2(c). The mode with
lower wavelength in Fig. 4(d) shows much more compact
confinement, with a Q = 1.21 105 . From the resonant field
profile, it can be said that this mode is caused by the defect
cavity. This can be verified by observing the SFT of this mode
which clearly resembles the mode SFT corresponding to a
defect cavity shown in [10]. Thus, when both PC0 and PC1 is
space modulated, the resultant cavity can sustain two modes
of similar Q with different wavelengths and different confining
mechanism. Hence, This cavity is the hybrid cavity.
IV. I MPACT OF S PACE M ODULATION
A. Extent
B. Depth
It is now evident that the extent of space modulation
has clear impact on the confinement mechanism of a space
modulated MHT cavity. To investigate the effect of the depth

(a)
(a)

(b)
(b)
Fig. 5. (a)The resonant wavelengths and Q of the cavity for increasing
number of modulated PC layers. (i) Q of the modes caused by the defect
cavity. (ii) Q of the modes caused by the MHT. (iii) The resonant wavelength
of modes caused by the defect cavity. (iv) The resonant wavelength of modes
caused by the MHT. (b) The difference between the two resonant wavelength
of the space modulated MHT cavity for increasing number of modulated PC
layers..

of space modulation on the resonant properties of the hybrid

cavity, we studied the hybrid cavity with increasing modulation
depth (D). The change in resonant wavelengths and Q against
increasing modulation depth (as fraction of the lattice constant)
is shown in Fig. 6(a). It can be seen that all the resonant
cavities and quality factors decrease, although the Q factors of
the hybrid cavity always remain higher than the unmodulated
MHT cavity. At deeper space modulation, the transition along
z axis becomes too abrupt which reduces the quality factor.
Also, at higher space modulation, the two competing confinement mechanism becomes increasingly detuned, as evident by
the fact that the difference between the resonant wavelengths
of the cavity decreases with increasing space modulation
(Fig. 6(b)). Thus, the modulation depth has a measure of
control over the competition between the MHT cavity and
defect cavity. However, modulation depth has no effect on

Fig. 6. (a)The resonant wavelengths and Q of the cavity against increasing

modulation depth. (i) Q of the modes caused by the defect cavity. (ii) Q of the
modes caused by the MHT. (iii) The resonant wavelength of modes caused
by the defect cavity. (iv) The resonant wavelength of modes caused by the
MHT. (b) The difference between the two resonant wavelength of the space
modulated MHT cavity against modulation depth.

the mechanism themselves. In Fig. 7, the resonant modes of

the cavity and corresponding SFTs for two modulation depth
D = a/25 and D = a/10 are shown. The salient features
of the field profiles and their SFT remain unchanged for two
different modulation depths.
V. D ISORDER S TABILITY
Most of the times, due to fabrication error some uncertainty
on the design parameters of a PC cavity is introduced. For
example, all the air holes may not be of same radius or all
the airholes may not be in the exact position specified by the
design. Defect cavities are specially sensitive to this type of
errors, which is quite problematic. To investigate the disorder
stability of the designed space modulated MHT cavity, we
calculated the impulse response of the cavity after introducing
disorder in the positions of the airholes. We performed separate
calculations for added disorder with standard deviation ()

VI. C ONCLUSION

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Fig. 7. The magnetic field profiles of both resonant modes of the cavity
for D = a/25 caused by (a) defect cavity and (b) MHT cavity. The same
profiles for D = a/10 are shown in (c) and (d) respectively. In the inset
corresponding SFTs are shown.

In this work, we have demonstrated an analytical design

flow for designing MHT cavity with gaussian field profile
even when the waveguide dispersion is nonquadratic. Then we
introduced space modulation along the direction perpendicular
to the waveguide in the MHT, which resulted in a higher Q. We
investigated the effect of space modulation on the MHT and
found out that if only the central PC is space modulated, the
cavity acts as a donor defect cavity. When the PCs immediately
besides the central PC are space modulated, the cavity acts
as a mix between defect cavity and MHT cavity. But when
the central PC and those immediately besides it are space
modulated, the cavity acts as a hybrid cavity with two different
confinement mechanisms, two different resonant wavelengths
and resonant field profiles and two similarly high Q. The
modes of this hybrid cavity becomes increasingly detuned
at higher modulation depth, but their Q doesnt fall below
5 104 . We also investigated the disorder stability of the
cavity by simulating the cavities with added position disorder.
We found that both modes of the hybrid cavity are highly
insensitive to disorder in position. Since this cavity can sustain
two controllably coupled high Q modes with stability against
fabrication disorder, this type of cavities can be used in lasers,
switching and in planar photonic circuits.
R EFERENCES

Fig. 8. The normalized impulse response of the cavity with added disorder.
Results are shown for disorders of increasing standard deviation.

of = a/10, = a/5 and = 3a/10 respectively. The

results are shown in the Fig. 8. From the figure, it is evident
that despite increasing disorder, the space modulated MHT
cavity continues to demonstrate two separate resonant modes
whose wavelengths remain very close despite the disorder. The
results are summarized in the Table III. It can be seen that both
resonances show remarkable robustness against the disorder
despite their different confinement mechanism.

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TABLE III
P ERCENT CHANGE IN THE RESONANT WAVELENGTHS OF THE CAVITY.
Standard Deviation

% 1

% 2

0.1a
0.2a
0.1a

0.62 %
1.78 %
2.51 %

0.181 %
3.44 %
1.734 %

Ashfaqul Anwar Siraji received the B.Sc. Eng. degree in electrical and electronic engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and technology
(BUET) in 2012. His current research interests are photonic crystal resonators,
quantum phenomena in nanostructures and plasmonic nano-structures.

M. Shah Alam (SM04) received the B.Sc. Eng., M.Sc. Eng., and the Ph.D.
degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in 1989, 1994, and 1997,
respectively. He was awarded a gold medal for outstanding performance
in B.Sc. Engineering examination. He received the Japanese Government
Scholarship from April 1991 to March 1997 for pursuing his graduate
studies, and received his Ph.D. degree from Hokkaido University, Sapporo,
Japan. In 1997, he was a visiting researcher in Electrotechnical Laboratory,
Tsukuba, Japan. Then in 1998, he became a lecturer in the Department of
Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering
and Technology (BUET), Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he is now a Professor.
During 2003-2004, he was on postdoctoral study leave from BUET and
worked as a research fellow with the photonics research group in City
University London, UK. His current research interests include optical fibers,
photonic crystal fibers, nonlinear properties in fibers, electrooptic modulators,
the application of numerical techniques to guided wave photonics problems,
and microwave integrated circuits.
Dr. Alam is a senior member of IEEE, and member of Bangladesh
Computer society and the Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh.