Strong light–matter interactions based on excitons and the abnormal all-dielectric anapole mode with both large field enhancement and low loss

Abstract

The room temperature strong coupling between the photonic modes of micro/nanocavities and quantum emitters (QEs) can bring about promising advantages for fundamental and applied physics. Improving the electric fields (EFs) by using plasmonic modes and reducing their losses by applying dielectric nanocavities are widely employed approaches to achieve room temperature strong coupling. However, ideal photonic modes with both large EFs and low loss have been lacking. Herein, we propose the abnormal anapole mode (AAM), showing both a strong EF enhancement of ∼70-fold (comparable to plasmonic modes) and a low loss of 34 meV, which is much smaller than previous records of isolated all-dielectric nanocavities. Besides realizing strong coupling, we further show that by replacing the normal anapole mode with the AAM, the lasing threshold of the AAM-coupled QEs can be reduced by one order of magnitude, implying a vital step toward on-chip integration of nanophotonic devices.