New photon shapes open the door to advanced optical technologies

Scientists from the University of Twente in the Netherlands have gained important insights into photons, the elementary particles that make up light. They “behave” in an amazingly greater variety than the electrons surrounding atoms, while also being much easier to control.

These new findings have wide applications from smart LED lighting to new photonic bits of information controlled by quantum circuits to sensitive nanosensors. Their results are published in Physical overview B.

In atoms, tiny elementary particles called electrons occupy regions around the nucleus in shapes called orbitals. These orbitals give the probability of finding an electron in a certain region of space. Quantum mechanics determines the shape and energy of these orbitals. Similar to electrons, scientists describe the region of space where a photon is most likely to be found with orbitals as well.

“Whatever Wild Shape You Design”

Researchers at the University of Twente have studied these photonic orbitals and found that by carefully designing specific materials, they can create and control these orbitals with a great variety of shapes and symmetries. These results have potential applications in advanced optical technologies and quantum computing.

First author Kozon explains: “In textbook chemistry, electrons always orbit a small atomic nucleus in the center of an orbital. So the shape of an electron orbital cannot deviate too far from a perfect sphere. With photons, orbitals can have any wild shape. design by combining different optical materials in designed spatial arrangements .”

Easier to design

The researchers performed a computational study to understand how photons behave when they are confined in a specific 3D nanostructure consisting of tiny pores (a photonic crystal). These cavities are intentionally designed to have defects and create a superstructure that isolates the photonic states from the surrounding environment.

Physicists Vos and Lagendijk say: “Given the rich toolbox in nanotechnology, it is much easier to design clever nanostructures with new photonic orbitals than it is to modify atoms to realize new electronic orbitals and chemistry.”

Advanced optical technologies

Photonic orbitals are important for the development of advanced optical technologies such as efficient lighting, quantum computing, and sensitive photonic sensors. The researchers also studied how these nanostructures increase the local density of optical states, which is important for applications in cavity quantum electrodynamics.

They found that structures with smaller defects revealed greater enhancement than structures with larger defects. This makes them more suitable for integrating quantum dots and creating networks of single photons.