Microcavity filters based on hexagonal lattice 2-D photonic crystal structures embedded in ridge waveguides

Two-dimensionally periodic photonic crystal microcavity filters in a ridge waveguide format have been designed and fabricated. Transition mode-matching features were added to increase the optical throughput by more than a factor of two. An increase of Q-factor (more than 100%) was achieved by the addition of two further rows of photonic crystal holes to the microcavity filters. Attempts have also been made to tailor the filter response by applying design concepts used in other Bragg-grating optical filter technologies.     

Band structure of photonic crystal fibers with silica rings in triangular lattice

The characteristics of the cladding band structure of air-core photonic crystal fibers with silica rings in triangular lattice are investigated by using a standard plane wave method. The numerical results show that light can be localized in the air core by the photonic band gaps of the fiber. By increasing the air-filling fraction, the band gap edges of the low frequency photonic band gaps shift to shorter wavelength, whereas the band gap width decreases linearly. In order to make a specified light fall in the low frequency band gaps of the fiber, the interplay of the silica ring spacing and the air-filling fraction is also analyzed. It shows that the silica ring spacing increases monotonously when the air-filling fraction is increased, and the spacing range increases exponentially. This type fiber might have potential in infrared light transmission.     

A 2D rods-in-air square-lattice photonic crystal optical switch

A 2D photonic crystal optical switch is proposed based on a rods-in-air square-lattice photonic crystal by removing two cross-lines of rods from a 2D square-lattice photonic crystal to form four optical channels. The simulation results show that, when inserting a single rod along the diagonal line of the intersection area of two removed cross-lines of rods, the position of the single inserted rod determines how much incident energy goes into different channels. In the case of transverse magnetic (TM) Gaussian point source, time domain simulation shows that up to 87.3% of the incident energy can be switched into a channel, which is vertical to the source channel. Because there are two diagonal lines in the intersection area of two removed cross-lines of rods, the optical switch feature is achieved by shifting the inserted rod between two diagonal lines. It is also found that the magnitude of the reflected wave in the source channel varies greatly with spatial position of the single inserted rod. The larger the magnitude of the reflected wave in the source channel, the less the energy that goes into the switched channel. The time delay between the incident wave and the reflected wave in the source channel is also related to the position of the single inserted rod. In addition, the large time delay between the incident wave and the reflected wave in the source channel shows that the reflected wave encounters many reflections with the walls of the source channel, instead of waves reflected back from the single inserted rod.     

Dispersionless slow light by photonic crystal slab waveguide with innermost elliptical air holes

We report a low-loss photonic crystal slab waveguide formed by deforming the innermost circle air holes in the conventional photonic crystal slab waveguide into elliptical ones. We obtain the photonic bands and group index of guided modes in this photonic crystal waveguide by guided-mode expansion method and investigate the dependence of photonic bands and group index of guided modes on the parameters of the innermost elliptical air holes. The group velocity and group velocity dispersion of this waveguide strongly depend on the innermost elliptical air holes. Photonic crystal slab waveguide with the optimum innermost elliptical air holes possesses a wider single mode region below the light line, in which light can easily propagate without intrinsic loss. At the same time, the guided mode supported by this waveguide has nearly constant group velocity and vanishing group velocity dispersion in a 3-5 nm bandwidth.     

Kerr nonlinear switch based on ultra-compact photonic crystal directional coupler

In this paper, an all optical switch based on nonlinear photonic crystal directional coupler has been simulated and analyzed by the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. The lunched pump signal increases the refractive indices of the central row of the coupler, due to nonlinear Kerr effect, hence the coupler works in the nonlinear conditions and lightwave guides to the other output port. We have tried to increase the coupling efficiency and reduce the required power in the nonlinear status by optimizing the bends structure and increasing the interaction between dielectric and lightwave signal. Therefore, the input signal beam can be controlled to be exchanged between two output ports to earn the highest output power ratio and the smallest amount of power required for nonlinear performance, the physical length of the coupler is determined to be 20a, where a is the structure lattice constant.     

Novel composite beam splitter with directional coupler and Y-junction using photonic crystal

We propose and analyze a novel multiway high efficiency composite beam splitter based on propagation properties of the light waves in directional coupler and Y-junction. The splitting properties of the beam splitter have been numerically simulated and analyzed using the PWE and FDTD methods. Then in order to obtain equal distribution of power, we place and adjust some additional rods in the output waveguides to optimize the devices. It was shown that a large separating angle, a high beam rate, high flexibility, has been extended to have more light output channels in the beam splitter.     

T-shaped optical circulator based on coupled magneto-optical rods and a side-coupled cavity in a square-lattice photonic crystal

We propose and numerically investigate a kind of high-efficiency T-shaped optical circulator in a two-dimensional square-lattice photonic crystal. In the T-shaped structure, the single-direction light transmission for 90° light-bending is achieved by coupling two magneto-optical rods. And aided with a side-coupled cavity, two paths of single-direction 90° light-bending are effectively combined, which realizes the nonreciprocal light transmission for two waveguides arranged and linked along a straight line. The optical properties of the system are investigated by finite element method. The circulator considered here can be used for isolating light reflections and improving system stabilization in designing photonic crystal integrated circuits.     

Power splitter based on cascaded multimode photonic crystal waveguides with triangular lattice of air holes

We propose a power splitter based on two-dimensional photonic crystals with triangular lattice of air holes. The structure can be divided into three sections consisting of the input waveguide, area-defect regions, and output waveguides. The operational principle of the splitter is that an incident field in the frequency range of interest is split into a twofold mode pattern with small distance in the first area-defect and then one of which is shifted by the secondary area-defect regions to output port. We optimize the size of area-defects for the mode-splitting and the shifting from the numerical analysis of distribution of time-averaged Poynting vectors by a finite-difference time domain method. And the transmittance over 45% per each output with a bandwidth about 0.06a/λ is achieved.     

Ultracompact refractive index sensor based on microcavity in the sandwiched photonic crystal waveguide structure

A refractive index (RI) sensor based on the two-dimensional photonic crystal is presented. The sensor is formed by a point-defect resonant cavity in the sandwiched waveguide structure. The transmission spectrums of the sensor with different ambient refractive indices ranging from n = 1.0 to n = 1.6 are calculated. The calculation results show that a change in ambient RI of Δn = 0.001 is apparent, the sensitivity of the sensor (Δλ/Δn) is achieved with 330 nm/RIU (when lattice constant a = 440 nm), where RIU means the refractive index unit; and the transmission efficiency in the RI range of 1.0-1.6 can reach about 40% to 70%, that make the detection of spectrum easy and feasible. The properties of the sensor are analyzed and calculated using the plane-wave expansion (PWE) method and simulated using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method.     

Improving unrestricted imaging quality of a triangular lattice photonic crystal slab by modifying surface configuration

We propose a photonic crystal (PC) structure only by replacing square lattice [Luo et al. (2002) [12]] with triangular lattice to obtain an unrestricted imaging. Equal-frequency contours (EFCs) analysis shows that this triangular lattice two-dimensional PC exhibits an effective isotropic refractive index n_eff=−1 at a normalized frequency ω=0.291×2πc/a. Imaging quality of this triangular lattice PC slab involving both power intensity and full-width at half-maximum intensity of the image is studied using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation. In order to achieve a high-quality image, an appropriate surface termination is chosen. In addition, by adjusting the surface air-hole radius of the PC slab, the imaging quality can be further improved. Coupled-mode theory analysis shows that the optimized surface termination and the adjusted surface air-hole can excite two kinds of surface modes that can couple with the Bloch wave in the PC. With the help of these surface modes, both the intensity of image and the super-resolution capacity of this triangular lattice PC slab can be improved greatly.     

Design of high-Q cavities in 2D photonic crystals air holes filled with polymer

We design novel photonic crystal heterostructure, substituting the air in the holes with materials of refractive index higher than n = 1. This can be achieved by infiltrating the photonic crystal (PC) with polymer. We theoretically investigate the L₂ cavity with two missing holes in the center, where the six holes surrounding the cavity are locally filled with polymer. We show that cavity modes can be differently tuned depending on the size and the position of the first hole adjacent to the cavity. A photonic microcavity with a high Q factor of 5.5 × 10⁶ and a modal volume V of 0.1919 is demonstrated. We demonstrate that the calculated Q factor for the designed cavity increases by a factor of 22 relative to that for a cavity without displaced and reduced air holes, while the modal volume remains almost constant.     

Fabrication and demonstration of square lattice two-dimensional rod-type photonic bandgap crystal optical intersections

This paper reports fabrication and demonstration of optical intersections in two-dimensional (2D) rod-type photonic crystal (PhC) structures. High resolution and aspect ratio 2D square lattice PhC waveguide intersections were designed and fabricated for application at the optical communication wavelengths centered at 1550 nm. In the silicon processing front, challenges resolved to overcome issues of drastically reduced process windows caused by the dense PhC rods arrays with critical dimensions (CDs) reduced to only a few hundred nanometers were addressed not only in terms of critical process flow design but also in the development of each processing module. In the lithographic process of deep ultraviolet laser system working at 248 nm, PhC rods of sub-lithographic wavelength CDs (115 nm in radii) were realized in high resolution, even near periphery regions where proximity errors were prone. In the deep etching module, stringent requirements on etch angle control and low sidewall scallops (undulations arising from time multiplexed etch and passivation actions) were satisfied, to prevent catastrophic etch failures, and enable optical quality facets. The successfully fabricated PhCs were also monolithically integrated with large scale optical testing fiber grooves that enabled macro optical fiber assisted coupling to the micro scale PhC devices. In the optical experiments, the transmission and crosstalk properties for the PhC intersection devices with different rod radii at the center of the PhC optical waveguides crossings were measured with repeatability. The properties of the PhC intersections were therefore optimized and verified to correspond well with first principle finite difference time domain simulations.     

Design and simulation of a switch based on nonlinear directional coupler

In this paper, we have analyzed a nonlinear photonic crystal directional coupler by the finite difference time domain method. We have tried to increase the coupling efficiency and also reduce the coupling length in linear and nonlinear states in this device. In this coupler, refractive index of the rods of the central row is tuned by input signal power due to nonlinear Kerr effect; therefore, input signal beam can be controlled so as to be exchanged between two output ports. Physical length is chosen to be 24a so as to have the highest output power ratio and also the smallest amount of power required for nonlinear performance.     

High-Q microcavities realized in a circular photonic crystal slab

A series of microcavities in circular photonic crystal slabs are studied in this paper. It is shown that high quality factors can be obtained for such microcavities. For a cavity with three inner layers of air holes missing, Q factor larger than 10⁵ can be obtained. It is also worth noting there exists resonant modes with high quality factors, even for the defect-free circular photonic crystal slab, due to gradual change of the average effective index.     

A compact wavelength division de-multiplexer based on directional coupling of one-dimensional photonic crystal waveguides

A fundamental dual-channel wavelength division de-multiplexer (WDDM) based on directional coupling of one-dimensional photonic crystal waveguides is presented, and its transmission characteristics of the WDDM are investigated by using finite-difference time-domain method. Calculated results indicate that for this WDDM, without any structural optimization, a high transmittance of more than 95% is observed at output ports. Combining the fundamental dual-channel WDDM with flexible bends of one-dimensional photonic crystal waveguides, we construct a simple and compact four-channel WDDM. Those WDDMs are expected to be applied to highly dense photonic integrated circuits.     

Optimization of a 2D photonic crystal add/drop multiplexer based on contra-directional coupling

We present a highly integrated add/drop multiplexer, where the contra-directional coupling is realized by phase matching two photonic crystal waveguides. The device band structure, the corresponding transmission and drop spectra, and the coupling length are carefully analysed. Different device configurations are discussed and by tailoring the coupling factor, we optimize the frequency response of the filter, obtaining a -sized channel selector, characterized by a very high drop efficiency.     

Dual-frequency division de-multiplexer based on cascaded photonic crystal waveguides

A dual-frequency division de-multiplexing mechanism is demonstrated using cascaded photonic crystal waveguides with unequal waveguide widths. The de-multiplexing mechanism is based on the frequency shift of the waveguide bands for the unequal widths of the photonic crystal waveguides. The modulation in the waveguide bands is used for providing frequency selectivity to the system. The slow light regime of the waveguide bands is utilized for extracting the desired frequency bands from a wider photonic crystal waveguide that has a relatively larger group velocity than the main waveguide for the de-multiplexed frequencies. In other words, the wider spatial distribution of the electric fields in the transverse direction of the waveguide for slow light modes is utilized in order to achieve the dropping of the modes to the output channels. The spectral and spatial de-multiplexing features are numerically verified. It can be stated that the presented mechanism can be used to de-multiplex more than two frequency intervals by cascading new photonic crystal waveguides with properly selected widths.     

Optical sensing characteristics of the photonic crystal fiber filled with magnetic fluid

A novel photonic crystal fiber sensing theory filled with magnetic fluid is proposed based on the change of the MF refractive index under varied magnetic field. The magnetically induced tuning of the magnetic fluid filled PCF propagation properties were investigated by the full-vector finite element method with a perfectly matched layer. Theoretical calculations show that both the effective refractive index and the effective mode area increase vs. the increased magnetic field, and the PCF filled MF with larger d/Λ is more sensitive to magnetic field. When the wavelength λ = 1550 nm, the duty ratio d/Λ = 0.9, d/Λ = 0.6, the effective refractive indexes increase respectively from 1.598279 to 1.617572, from 1.61948 to 1.632484, and the effective mode areas increase respectively from 3.561115 μm² to 7.052360 μm², from 6.167494 μm² to 37.221998 μm² as the magnetic field changes from 25 Oe to 175 Oe. This scheme provides theoretical foundation to use magnetic field to control light in photonic crystal fiber and also offers a potential method for magnetic field sensing based on the TIR-PCF.     

Phase and group modal birefringence of an index-guiding photonic crystal fibre with helical air holes

In this paper, we propose a novel photonic crystal fibre (PCF) with high phase birefringence and very low group birefringence. It is composed of a solid silica core and a cladding with helix-pattern air holes. Using a full-vector finite-element method, we study the phase and group modal birefringence of such PCF at various air-hole sizes, pitches and wavelengths. Owing to this innovative structure of air holes, a high phase to group modal birefringence rate is obtained. Its phase modal birefringence is as large as 10⁻⁴ magnitude; however, the group modal birefringence of this PCF is at 10⁻⁷-10⁻⁶. The phase birefringence is 2 orders of magnitude larger than group birefringence over a broad wavelength span, which means that the light with different polarization and effective index has almost a same group velocity. As a result, the group modal birefringence that closely relates to the polarization modal dispersion is negligible.     

Design and tolerance analysis of optical interleaver based on retardant crystals

A set of recursion equations was developed for the design of an optical interleaver based on retardant crystals and a third-order optical interleaver with maximally flat passband was designed accordingly. The fabrication tolerance for the retardant crystals was simulated based on crosstalk consideration. Given crosstalk requirement of −25 dB, the tolerance for the crystal thickness and axis orientation was obtained as 0.91 μm and 0.51°, respectively.