Open AccessUltra slow light achievement in photonic crystals by merging coupled cavities with waveguides
Author(s) -
Kadir Üstün,
Hamza Kurt
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.18.021155
Subject(s) - slow light , group velocity , photonic crystal , optics , finite difference time domain method , dispersion (optics) , photonics , waveguide , quantum tunnelling , laser , physics , optoelectronics , materials science
We explore slow light behavior of a specially designed optical waveguide by carrying out structural dispersion using numerical techniques. The structure proposed is composed of square-lattice photonic crystal waveguide integrated with side-coupled cavities. We report three orders of magnitude reduction in group velocity at around υ(g) ≅ 0.0008c with strongly suppressed group velocity dispersion. The analysis is performed by using both plane-wave expansion and finite-difference time-domain methods. For the first time, we succeeded to show such a low group velocity in photonic structures. Slow light pulse propagation accompanied by light tunneling between each cavity is observed. These achievements show the feasibility of photonic devices to generate extremely large group index which in turn will eventually pave the way to new frontiers in nonlinear optics, optical buffers and low threshold lasers.