Complete transparency with three active-passive-coupled optical resonators

Abstract

The phenomena of induced transparency, with the typical examples of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in atomic media and those based on coupled optical resonators, have attracted tremendous interest since their discoveries. Owing to the limitations of the involved physical elements, however, near-100\% transmissions were reported under highly demanding experimental conditions. With a structure of three linearly coupled optical resonators, an active one carrying optical gain and two passive ones simply with dissipation, we demonstrate that a transmitted light field can become completely transparent through the structure, which displays all properties similar to those of EIT. It is due to a destructive interference mechanism that totally eliminates the intracavity field in the dissipative resonator directly coupled to the transmitted field of any feasible power, when the coupling strength of two other resonators is tuned across a point determined by their associated gain and loss rates. This mechanism works for all possible coupling strengths of the dark resonator with the input field and its neighboring resonator, as well as for any available quality factor from its fabrication. The transparency window size and output field intensity can be freely adjusted by tuning two inter-cavity couplings of wide ranges, without modifying the built-in optical gain which can be just slightly stronger than the dissipation of the active resonator.