Abstract

Although optical absorption is an intrinsic materials property, it can be manipulated through structural modification. Coherent perfect absorption increases absorption to 100% interferometrically but is typically realized only over narrow bandwidths using two laser beams with fixed phase relationship. We show that engineering a thin film’s photonic environment severs the link between the effective absorption of the film and its intrinsic absorption while eliminating, in principle, bandwidth restrictions. Employing thin aperiodic dielectric mirrors, we demonstrate coherent perfect absorption in a 2 μm thick film of polycrystalline silicon using a single incoherent beam of light at all the resonances across a spectrally flat, octave-spanning near-infrared spectrum, $\approx 800–1600\mathrm{nm}$. Critically, these mirrors have wavelength-dependent reflectivity devised to counterbalance the decline in silicon’s intrinsic absorption at long wavelengths.

© 2016 Optical Society of America

Analytical model for coherent perfect absorption in one-dimensional photonic structures

Massimo L. Villinger, Mina Bayat, Lorelle N. Pye, and Ayman F. Abouraddy
Opt. Lett. 40(23) 5550-5553 (2015)

Experimental demonstration of coherent perfect absorption in a silicon photonic racetrack resonator

Jacob M. Rothenberg, Christine P. Chen, Jason J. Ackert, Jerry I. Dadap, Andrew P. Knights, Keren Bergman, Richard M. Osgood, and Richard R. Grote
Opt. Lett. 41(11) 2537-2540 (2016)

Coherent perfect absorption in chiral metamaterials

Yuqian Ye, Darrick Hay, and Zhimin Shi
Opt. Lett. 41(14) 3359-3362 (2016)

Coherent perfect absorption in wedged organic thin films: a method to determine optical properties

Tony Henseleit, Markas Sudzius, Hartmut Fröb, and Karl Leo
Opt. Lett. 43(16) 4013-4016 (2018)

Octave-spanning coherent supercontinuum generation in a silicon nitride waveguide

Adrea R. Johnson, Aline S. Mayer, Alexander Klenner, Kevin Luke, Erin S. Lamb, Michael R. E. Lamont, Chaitanya Joshi, Yoshitomo Okawachi, Frank W. Wise, Michal Lipson, Ursula Keller, and Alexander L. Gaeta
Opt. Lett. 40(21) 5117-5120 (2015)