Spontaneous symmetry breaking of coupled Fabry–Pérot nanocavities

Abstract

Ring cavities are quickly emerging as preferential platforms to investigate spontaneous symmetry breaking. However, research on handedness polarisation splitting within Kerr-coupled cavities is yet at a preliminary stage. Here, we observe experimentally spontaneous symmetry breaking in a non-Hermitian coupled Fabry‒Pérot nanocavity. In the experiment, horizontally polarised light is incident on the nanocavities, and symmetry breaking occurs when the power exceeds the symmetry breaking threshold of $$8\,{{\mbox{mW}}}$$ 8 mW . We interpret such observation via nonlinear coupled mode theory, finding that an excitation power-dependent random splitting of right- or left-handed circular polarisations (RCP and LCP, respectively) emerges at the resonance peak. Further numerical simulations show that when the incident power is above the symmetry breaking threshold, the device exhibits spontaneous symmetry breaking characteristics: an additional polarisation component appears in the output field when the input field is monopolarised, and this is attributed to the imbalance of RCP and LCP. Our findings provide further understanding of spontaneous symmetry breaking in non-Hermitian systems and demonstrate the potential applications of the proposed device in optical signal processing.