Chaotic Photonics in Microresonators

Abstract: Chaos, commonly viewed in a negative light, is in fact an essential aspect of our world, acting as an invaluable source of fresh ideas, innovation, and advancement. This is particularly evident in the field of micro/nano photonics for various applications. In addition, photonics offers a platform for examining chaotic systems and theories. This paradigm has recently flourished in the context of optical microresonators in several different applications. In this talk, we will explore wave and ray chaotic dynamics in asymmetric (deformed) microresonators, followed by a discussion of various chaotic photonic applications. These applications encompass not only unidirectional lasers, bio/chemical sensing, nonlinear optics, but also non-Hermitian physics, momentum transformation, and more. Particularly, we will discuss our recent work on the emergence of reflectionless scattering modes in a chaotic photonic microcavity involving over a thousand optical modes. In the last second of my talk, I will briefly introduce a new type of nanocavity – bucket nanocavity, supporting optical modes with high quality factors (~400) and ultrasmall mode volumes (~10^-3 (l/n)³), as well as its application in 2D excitonic nanolasing.

Ref: [1] Laser & Photonics Reviews 10, 40-61 (2016); [6] Science 358, 344-347 (2017); [3] Nature Physics(2023) (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-023-02242-w).

Bio: Xuefeng Jiang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at Seton Hall University. He received both his B.S. degree and Ph.D. in Physics from Peking University. Subsequently, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow / research scientist at the University of Oregon, Washington University in St. Louis, and CUNY. His research interests include chaotic photonics, quantum photonics, biochemical sensing, and non-Hermitian physics. He has published over 30 peer-reviewed research papers in leading scientific journals, such as Science, Nature, Nature Physics, etc., and holds 3 US patents related to biosensing and bioimaging. Additionally, he serves on the editorial board of the journal Scientific Reports.