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Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Campus Access Master's Report

Degree Name

Master of Science in Applied Physics (MS)

Administrative Home Department

Department of Physics

Advisor 1

Ramy El-Ganainy

Committee Member 1

Miguel Levy

Committee Member 2

Durdu Guney

Abstract

Controlling light-matter interaction at the quantum level is crucial for modern quantum optics technologies ranging from building non-classical light sources and optical transistors, to quantum delay lines and memories. Particularly, efficient single-photon sources that can produce individual photons with high repetition rates are a common factor in most quantum optics schemes. One promising direction for building fast single photon sources is the integration of a quantum emitter inside a photonic resonator. The latter modifies the photonic local density of state in the vicinity of the emitter which can be engineered to speed up the emission rate - an effect that can be quantified by the so-called Purcell factor (PF). Despite the progress achieved in this field in the past two decades, the design concepts remained the same: to enhance the PF, one must either reduce the mode volume or increase the quality factor of the resonator. In this report, we explore a different route by utilizing the exotic features of a special type of spectral singularity that occur in non-Hermitian systems, namely exceptional points (EPs). More specifically, we present a photonic structure that implements a hypersurface of exceptional points in the design parameter space; and demonstrate that this configuration exhibits enough degrees of freedom to tailor the spontaneous emission rate, from full suppression to two-fold enhancement as compared to the same structure but without the EP. Derived results have been confirmed through full-wave simulations of realistic photonic structures and materials. Outcomes of this report offer a straightforward route to improve the performance of single photon sources using current photonics technology without the need for building optical resonators with ultra-high quality factors or nano-scale volumes.

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