Evidence of guided resonances in photonic quasicrystal slabs

Abstract

We report on the experimental evidence of Fano-type guided resonances (GRs) in aperiodically-ordered photonic quasicrystal slabs. With specific reference to the Ammann-Beenker (8-fold symmetric, quasiperiodic) octagonal tiling geometry, we present our experimental results on silicon-on-insulator devices operating at near-infrared wavelengths, and compare them with the full-wave numerical predictions based on periodic approximants. Our results indicate that spatial periodicity is not strictly required for the GR excitation, and may be effectively surrogated by weaker forms of long-range aperiodic order which intrinsically provide extra degrees of freedom (e. g., higher-order rotational symmetries, richer defect states and phase-matching conditions, etc.) to be exploited in the design and performance optimization of nanostructured dielectric slabs operating in the out-of-plane configuration. The essential spectral features may be qualitatively understood in terms of phase-matching conditions derived from approximate homogenized models, and turn out to be effectively captured by full-wave modeling based on suitably-sized periodic approximants.