Tunable interactions of quasibound states in the continuum with cavity mode in a metasurface-microcavity hybrid

All-dielectric photonic crystals or metasurfaces supporting optical bound states in the continuum (BIC) are emerging as a promising platform for the study of light-matter interactions in the strong coupling regime. However, coupling of BIC to other optical excitations is generally weak, with the coupling strength limited in the range of several tens of milli electronvolts with short decoherence time. This greatly hinders their applications in solid-base quantum information devices that require a fast information exchange rate and long coherence time. Herein, a cavity-coupling strategy is used to extend the BIC-based coupling platforms. We propose a hybrid system containing an all-dielectric metasurface embedded in an optical microcavity, demonstrating the formation of BIC-cavity polaritons in the strong coupling regime with a surprisingly large Rabi splitting over 220 meV, far beyond the strong coupling regime. A flexible tuning of BIC-cavity coupling from weak to strong coupling regime is realized by controlling the shape of dielectric element of the metasurface. Importantly, a full quantum model based on Heisenberg-Langevin formalism reveals the temporal population dynamics of the coupling system, demonstrating the ultrafast Rabi socillation within 19 fs with a long decoherence time over 200 fs. Utilizing the multipolar expansion approach combined with full wave simulations, we also investigate the coupling-induced polariton characteristics in both the weak and strong coupling regimes. We find that the electric dipole component of the BIC mode dominates in the polariton states in weak coupling regime, which dramatically changes as the system is tuned into strong coupling regime. Such a cavity-coupling strategy in the present hybrid system is expected to be of great use for enhancing BIC-based light-matter interactions for more complex hybrid nanostructures such as three-mode systems with mixing BIC-cavity-exciton interactions.