Research Interests

For on-chip applications, we desire small active components for three reasons: integration density, higher speed because of smaller round-trip times in the cavity and smaller capacitances, and thirdly because smaller lasers can have smaller threshold currents and thus operates at lesser power.

Topological and Chiral Photonics is a rapidly growing field that draws inspiration from topological insulators, but applies similar concepts to manipulate and control the flow of light. 
Researchers are investigating how to engineer photonic structures with topologically protected modes, such as edge states, that are robust against defects and scattering. 

One of our goals was specifically to explore the use of metals in combination with scaled laser cavities. In this work, we explored the use of metal-cladding (Au) on InP micro-disc lasers. We found that metal-clad cavities show lasing down to smaller dimensions (~300nm) and more stable lasing at higher powers compared to purely dielectric cavities. Not surprisingly, the use of metals did increase the lasing threshold slightly for room-temperature operated devices [9]. It is difficult to establish experimentally whether a given lasing mode is a hybrid photonic-plasmonic or a conventional photonic mode. However, what we did establish is that the use of a metal cavity dramatically improves the heat-sinking capability and hence reduces the temperatures reached in the nanolasers with hundreds of degrees during operation compared to purely dielectric cavities. In a follow-up work this was verified experimentally by the use of calibrated Raman measurements [8].