High coupling efficiency to a low dispersion slow light-supporting photonic crystal waveguide

Abstract

In this paper, we design a waveguide on photonic crystal slab for propagation of low-dispersion slow light. By shifting the air holes adjacent to the waveguide, we obtain a photonic crystal waveguide with a group index of 25 in 25 nm bandwidth which results in a group index bandwidth product of 0.366. To take the advantages of low dispersion slow light generated in this engineered waveguide, we next focus on low coupling efficiency limitation. A low group index coupler is proposed to increase the transmission of the light to the slow mode in the low dispersion bandwidth. By using the proposed coupler and adjusting the structural parameters, the coupling efficiency to low dispersion slow light is improved 11 dB compared to the transmission without the coupler.