Ultra-narrowband and rainbow-free mid-infrared thermal emitters enabled by a flat band design in distorted photonic lattices

Abstract

Most reported thermal emitters to date employing photonic nanostructures to achieve narrow bandwidth feature the rainbow effect due to the steep dispersion of the involved high-Q resonances. In this work, we propose to realize thermal emissions with high temporal coherence but free from rainbow effect, by harnessing a novel flat band design within a large range of wavevectors. This feature is achieved by introducing geometric perturbations into a square lattice of high-index disks to double the period along one direction. As a result of the first Brillouin zone halving, the guided modes will be folded to the Γ point and interact with originally existing guided-mode resonances to form a flat band of dispersion with overall high Q. Despite the use of evaporated amorphous materials, we experimentally demonstrate a thermal emission with the linewidth of 23 nm at 5.144 μm within a wide range of output angles (from −17.5° to 17.5°).

Narrowband thermal emitters realized with photonic nanostructures usually suffer from the rainbow effect. Here, the authors demonstrate rainbow-free thermal emissions with high temporal coherence through harnessing flatband high-Q resonances.