Magic-angle lasers in nanostructured moire superlattice

Conventional laser cavities require discontinuity of material property or disorder to localize a light field for feedback. Recently, an emerging class of materials, twisted van der Waals materials, have been explored for applications in electronics and photonics. Here we propose and develop magic-angle lasers, where the localization is realized in periodic twisted photonic graphene superlattices. We reveal that the confinement mechanism of magic-angle lasers does not rely on a full bandgap but on the mode coupling between two twisted layers of photonic graphene lattice. Without any fine-tuning in structure parameters, a simple twist can result in nanocavities with strong field confinement and a high quality factor. Furthermore, the emissions of magic-angle lasers allow direct imaging of the wavefunctions of magic-angle states. Our work provides a robust platform to construct high-quality nanocavities for nanolasers, nano light-emitting diodes, nonlinear optics and cavity quantum electrodynamics at the nanoscale.

Automated summary

A new type of optical device called magic-angle laser has been proposed and developed in this study, utilizing twisted photonic graphene superlattices for localized feedback of light fields. Unlike conventional laser cavities, magic-angle lasers do not require discontinuity of material property or disorder, and can achieve strong field confinement and high quality factor nanocavities through a simple twist.