Abstract

The interplay between photon tunneling and light-matter interactions in multi-well optical potentials –or photonic molecules (PMs)– is at the heart of many recent developments in quantum and nonlinear optics (see e.g. [1]). A key phenomenon taking place in double well potentials is the spontaneous breaking of the inversion symmetry: a bifurcation from delocalized to localized states in the wells, which are mirror images of each other. Although few theoretical studies have addressed mirror-symmetry breaking in micro and nanophotonic systems [2], no experimental evidence has been reported to date.

© 2015 IEEE