Realization of high-Q/V bichromatic photonic crystal cavities defined by an effective Aubry-Andre-Harper potential

We report on the design, fabrication and optical characterization of bichromatic photonic crystal cavities in thin silicon membranes, with resonances around 1550 nm wavelength. The cavity designs are based on a recently proposed photonic crystal implementation of the Aubry-Andre-Harper bichromatic potential, which relies on the superposition of two one-dimensional lattices with non-integer ratio between the periodicity constants. In photonic crystal nanocavities, this confinement mechanism is such that optimized figures of merit can be straightforwardly achieved, in particular an ultra-high-Q factor and diffraction-limited mode volume. Several silicon membrane photonic crystal nanocavities with Q-factors in the 1 million range have been realized, as evidenced by resonant scattering. The generality of these designs and their easy implementation and scalability make these results particularly interesting for realizing highly performing photonic nanocavities on different materials platforms and operational wavelengths.