Coupling influence on the refractive index sensitivity of photonic wire ring resonator

By taking the coupling effect into consideration, we study the resonance condition of a photonic wire microring resonator (PWRR) sensor and compare our results with the previous work. Simulation results show that the resonant wavelength and sensitivity strongly depend on the coupling strength. The difference caused by the coupling effect can be up to tens of nanometers for the resonant peak position and tens of nm/RIU for the sensitivity in a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) PWRR. Such a giant influence from coupling effect cannot be disregarded and should be considered seriously for the design and application of PWRRs. It also shows an alternative tuning technique by controlling the coupling strength.