Adiabatically tunable optical delay lines and their performance limitations

A simple tunable optical delay line based on adiabatic zone folding in coupled resonator lines is proposed, and its performance is analyzed. The results, valid for all adiabatically tunable optical buffers based on resonators, indicate that, while at low to medium bit rates the performance is improved substantially compared with that of the fixed delay lines, this improvement vanishes for high bit rates and large storage capacities.     

Vertically coupled whispering-gallery-mode resonator waveguide

We theoretically describe a novel configuration of a vertically coupled whispering-gallery-mode resonator waveguide. The waveguide is formed as a chain of doughnut-shaped low-contrast ripples on the surface of a vertical cylinder made from an optically transparent material. One can manipulate the properties of the waveguide by changing the shape of the resonators and the separation distance between them. Application of the structure as an optical delay line is discussed.     

Resonance amplifier model describing diode lasers coupled to short external resonators

A model of a regenerative resonance amplifier has been used to describe Fabry-Perot GaAs diode lasers coupled to short external resonators. The optical gain and the equivalent input of the resonance amplifier are controlled by means of appropriate rate equations. Homogeneous line-broadening and proportionality between gain and electron density have been assumed in this approach. The model was applied to a diode laser coupled to an external plane mirror placed at a variable distance from one diode mirror. A numerical evaluation of the coupling coefficient between laser and external cavity enables to predict the measured power output and mode selective properties of the coupled system. A similar analysis was done for diode lasers coupled to external hemispherical resonators. The model calculation confirms the previously demonstrated mode selective properties of the hemispherical configuration which permitted stable single mode operation.     

Transmission and group delay in a double microring resonator reflector

We present a microring resonator scheme for an optical reflector in which two microrings are coupled to two bus waveguides, to produce reflected signal at the input port. In this system, a single narrow reflected peak with maximum reflectivity near 100% in a wide spectral range due to the Vernier effect are achieved. We also investigate versatile reflection, transmission spectra and group delay characteristic. These effects are useful for applications in ring resonator-based photonic devices such as all-optical single wavelength tunable laser end mirrors, reflective wavelength switching, reflective filter and dual-wavelength delay line.     

Transmission and group delay of microring coupled-resonator optical waveguides

We measured the transmission and group delay of microring coupled-resonator optical waveguides (CROWs). The CROWs consisted of 12 weakly coupled, microring resonators fabricated in optical polymers (PMMA on Cytop). The intrinsic quality factor of the resonators was 18,000 and the interresonator coupling was 1%, resulting in a delay of 110-140 ps and a slowing factor of 23-29 over a 17 GHz bandwidth.     

Tunable delay line with interacting whispering-gallery-mode resonators

We theoretically study a parallel configuration of two interacting whispering-gallery-mode optical resonators and show a narrowband modal structure as a basis for a widely tunable delay line. For the optimum coupling configuration the system can possess an unusually narrow spectral feature with a much narrower bandwidth than the loaded bandwidth of each individual resonator. The effect has a direct analogy with the phenomenon of electromagnetically induced transparency in quantum systems for which the interference of spontaneous emission results in ultranarrow resonances.     

Design and analysis of all-optical 4–2 binary encoder based on photonic crystal

In this paper we theoretically propose combining optical waveguides with nonlinear photonic crystal based ring resonators for realizing an all optical 4–2 encoder. Nonlinear resonant rings are constructed from GaAs as the material used for dielectric rods. By application of optical beam to input ports of the structure the on/off states are realized and the resulting truth table confirms functionality of proposed device. The switching threshold and time delay of the device are about 1 kW/µm² and 1 ps, respectively. The normalized power at the output ports for all the ports in ON states is the same and equal to 60%.     

Transferring entangled states of photonic cat-state qubits in circuit QED

We propose a method for transferring quantum entangled states of two photonic cat-state qubits(cqubits)from two microwave cavities to the other two microwave cavities.This proposal is realized by using four microwave cavities coupled to a superconducting flux qutrit.Because of using four cavities with different frequencies,the inter-cavity crosstalk is significantly reduced.Since only one coupler qutrit is used,the circuit resource is minimized.The entanglement transfer is completed with a singlestep operation only,thus this proposal is quite simple.The third energy level of the coupler qutrit is not populated during the state transfer,therefore decoherence from the higher energy level is greatly suppressed.Our numerical simulations show that high-fidelity transfer of two-cqubit entangled states from two transmission line resonators to the other two transmission line resonators is feasible with current circuit QED technology.This proposal is universal and can be applied to accomplish the same task in a wide range of physical systems,such as four microwave or optical cavities,which are coupled to a natural or artificial three-level atom.     

Transmission characteristics of a Fabry-Perot etalon-microtoroid resonator coupled system

The transmission spectra of a Fabry-Perot etalon coupled to a microtoroid resonator are studied theoretically and experimentally. The resonance line shapes depend strongly on the resonance wavelength detuning and coupling strength between the two resonators. A wide variety of line shapes, ranging from a single to triple peaks, symmetric to asymmetric Fano-like peaks, and notches were predicted and observed experimentally. The capability to modify the spectral line shapes by tuning the coupling between or losses of two resonators may find applications in optical filtering, switching, sensing, and dispersion engineering.     

Dispersion compensation based on the combination of coupled ring resonator and photonic crystal structures

An optical delay line of coupled resonator optical waveguide(CROW) compensated by photonic crystal waveguide(PhCW) is proposed. In the structure,etching the periodic holes around the waveguide of the ring resonator waveguide does not increase the size of the CROW. Theoretical studies and numerical models indicate that through careful design,CROW and PhCW exhibit different group velocity dispersion(GVD) properties at a certain frequency range. Optical signal can not only be compensated in terms of GVD,but can also be delayed with longer time period. Due to the propagation mode mismatch of the two structures,optical loss becomes inevitable.     

"Ideal" optical delay lines based on tailored-coupling and reflecting, coupled-resonator optical waveguides

We present a design of "ideal" optical delay lines (i.e., constant amplitude and constant group delay over the desired bandwidth). They are based on reflection from coupled-resonator optical waveguides (CROWs). The inter-resonator coupling coefficients are tailored and decrease monotonically with the distance from the input to realize all-pass Bessel filters. The tailored coupling coefficients result in a frequency-dependent propagating distance which compensates for the group velocity dispersion of CROWs. We present a simple formalism for deriving the time-domain coupling coefficients and convert these coefficients to field coupling coefficients of ring resonators. The reflecting CROWs possess a delay-bandwidth product of 0.5 per resonator, larger than that of any kind of transmitting CROW. In the presence of uniform gain, the gain enhanced by slow light propagation and the constant group delay result in efficient and dispersion-free amplifiers.     

Continuously tunable 1 byte delay in coupled-resonator optical waveguides

A reconfigurable coupled-resonator optical waveguide made of a few directly coupled ring resonators is employed to control the delay of data streams modulated at tens of gigabits per second. A delay of 8 bit lengths (1 optical byte) with a small pulse broadening and 1 dB/bit fractional loss is achieved by using only eight rings. The limiting role of waveguide loss and spurious backreflections is experimentally investigated. The high storage efficiency (1 bit/ring) of the device enables an easy, reliable, hitless, and relatively low-power-consuming management of the delay. A higher storage efficiency is demonstrated to be associated to an unavoidable higher pulse distortion.     

Plasmon-assisted transparency in metal-dielectric microspheres

We present a theoretical analysis of light scattering from a layered metal-dielectric microsphere. The system consists of two spherical resonators coupled through concentric embedding. Solving for the modes of this system, we find that near an avoided crossing the scattering cross section is dramatically suppressed, exhibiting a tunable optical transparency. Similar to electromagnetically induced transparency, this phenomenon is associated with a large group delay, which in our system is manifest as flat azimuthal dispersion.     

Embedded ring resonators for microphotonic applications

We propose a new type of optical resonator that consists of embedded ring resonators (ERRs). The resonators exhibit unique amplitude and phase characteristics and allow designing compact filters, modulators, and delay elements. A basic configuration of the ERRs with two rings coupled in a point-to-point manner is discussed under two operating conditions. An ERR-based microring modulator shows a high operation speed up to 30 GHz. ERRs with distributed coupling are briefly described as well.     

Control of slow light in a ring-out-ring structure

This paper proposes a ring-out-ring structure of coupled optical resonators to yield coupled-resonator-induced transparency (CRIT). Considering the insertion loss of the coupler,it theoretically deduces the transmission and the effective phase shift. The influences of the insertion loss of the coupler on the transmittance,the effective phase shift,the group index and the CRIT linewidth are fully studied. We find that the increase in multiple m can effectively enhance the normal dispersion and the group index of the proposed structure. Moreover,the specific expression of the group index at resonance is theoretically deduced and discussed for the proposed structure with two rings. The result shows that the multiple m between the lengths of ring 1 and ring 2 can enhance the group index to m times that of the structure with two equal-sized rings at resonance. The control of slow light in the proposed structure is important for applications of highly sensitivity gyroscopes,optical delay lines and optical buffers,etc.     

High finesse microfiber knot resonators made from double-ended tapered fibers

We fabricated optical microfiber knot resonators from thin tapered fibers (diameter down to 1 μm) linked to untapered fiber at both ends. We demonstrated a finesse of about 100, over twice as high as previously reported for microfiber resonators. Low-loss encapsulation of microfiber knot resonators in hydrophobic silica aerogel was also investigated.     

Experimental realization of an on-chip all-optical analogue to electromagnetically induced transparency

We provide the first experimental observation of structure tuning of the electromagnetically induced transparency-like spectrum in integrated on-chip optical resonator systems. The system consists of coupled silicon ring resonators with 10 microm diameter on silicon, where the coherent interference between the two coupled resonators is tuned. We measured a transparency-resonance mode with a quality factor of 11,800.     

Performance Analysis of Triple Asymmetrical Optical Micro Ring Resonator with 2 × 2 Input-Output Bus Waveguide

Modeling of triple asymmetrical optical micro ring resonator (TAOMRR) in z-domain with 2?×?2 input-output system with detailed design of its waveguide configuration using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method is presented. Transfer function in z-domain using delay-line signal processing technique of the proposed TAOMRR is determined for different input and output ports. The frequency response analysis is carried out using MATLAB software. Group delay and dispersion characteristics are also determined in MATLAB. The electric field analysis is done using FDTD. The method proposes a new methodology to design and draw multiple configurations of coupled ring resonators having multiple in and out ports. Various important parameters such as coupling coefficients and FSR are also determined.     

Optical bright and dark states in side-coupled resonator structures

We analyze side-coupled standing-wave cavity structures consisting of Fabry-Perot and photonic crystal resonators coupled to two waveguides. We show that optical bright and dark states, analogous to those observed in coherent light-matter interactions, can exist in these systems. These structures may be useful for variable, switchable delay lines.     

Transmission and group-delay characterization of coupled resonator optical waveguides apodized through the longitudinal offset technique

In this Letter, the amplitude and group delay characteristics of coupled resonator optical waveguides apodized through the longitudinal offset technique are presented. The devices have been fabricated in silicon-on-insulator technology employing deep ultraviolet lithography. The structures analyzed consisted of three racetracks resonators uniform (nonapodized) and apodized with the aforementioned technique, showing a delay of 5 ± 3 ps and 4 ± 0.5 ps over 1.6 and 1.4 nm bandwidths, respectively.