Loss-induced switching between electromagnetically induced transparency and critical coupling in a chalcogenide waveguide

Optical loss is generally perceived to be an adverse effect in integrated optics. Herein, in contrast, we propose a mechanism to harness the loss in a coupled high-Q resonators system to realize on-chip electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). The increasing loss of one of the coupled resonators results in a difference in Q factor, leading to EIT generation. This optical loss-induced EIT is studied analytically using the coupled-mode theory and demonstrated experimentally in chalcogenide coupled microring resonators. By taking advantage of the chalcogenide phase change materials that feature exceptional optical property contrasts, we further demonstrate the loss-induced mechanism to realize fast and nonvolatile responses between the EIT state and the critical coupling state in a monolithically integrated chip. Our results provide a new perspective to harvest the negative loss effect of coupled resonators for tunable photonic devices, which might shed new light on the design ideology for on-chip slow-light optical components. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America