Fractional optical angular momentum and multi-defect-mediated mode re-normalization and orientation control in photonic crystal microring resonators

Abstract: Whispering gallery modes (WGMs) in circularly symmetric optical microresonators exhibit integer quantized angular momentum numbers due to the boundary condition imposed by the geometry. Here, we show that incorporating a photonic crystal pattern in an integrated microring can result in WGMs with fractional optical angular momentum. By choosing the photonic crystal periodicity to open a photonic bandgap with a band-edge momentum lying between that of two WGMs of the unperturbed ring, we observe hybridized WGMs with half-integer quantized angular momentum numbers ($m \in \mathbb{Z}$ + 1/2). Moreover, we show that these modes with fractional angular momenta exhibit high optical quality factors with good cavity-waveguide coupling and an order of magnitude reduced group velocity. Additionally, by introducing multiple artificial defects, multiple modes can be localized to small volumes within the ring, while the relative orientation of the de-localized band-edge states can be well-controlled. Our work unveils the renormalization of WGMs by the photonic crystal, demonstrating novel fractional angular momentum states and nontrivial multi-mode orientation control arising from continuous rotational symmetry breaking. The findings are expected to be useful for sensing/metrology, nonlinear optics, and cavity quantum electrodynamics.