High Quality Factor Confinement of Bloch Surface Waves at Visible Wavelengths

We report the first experimental demonstration of high quality factor confinement of Bloch surface waves at visible wavelengths. The cavities consist of planar Fabry-Pérot resonators that are fabricated on top of a Bloch surface supporting substrate. This work presents the design and fabrication methods used for the setting up of the experiment. Quality factors of the order of 2000 are measured. This work demonstrates that optical surface waves can be efficiently confined, and thus constitute a viable alternative to guided waves for on chip optical components and operations.