No Arabic abstract
We show that symmetric planar waveguides made of a film composed of a type II hyperbolic metamaterial, where the optical axis (OA) lays parallel to the waveguide interfaces, result in a series of topological transitions in the dispersion diagram as the film electrical thickness increases. The transitions are mediated by elliptical mode branches, which, as soon as they grow from cutoff, coalesce along the OA with anomalously ordered hyperbolic mode branches, resulting in a saddle point. When the electrical thickness of the film increases further, the merged branch starts a transition to hyperbolic normally ordered modes with propagation direction orthogonal to the OA. In this process, the saddle point is transformed into a branch point where a new branch of Ghost waves appears and slow light is observed for a broad range of thicknesses.
Slow light in topological valley photonic crystal structures offers new possibilities to enhance light-matter interaction. We report a topological cavity based on slow light topological edge mode for broadband Purcell enhancement. The topological edge modes with large group indices over 100 can be realized with a bearded interface between two topologically distinct valley photonic crystals, featuring the greatly enhanced Purcell factor because of the increased local density of states. In the slow light regime, the topological cavity supports much more cavity modes with higher quality factor than that in the fast light regime, which is both demonstrated theoretically and experimentally. We demonstrate the cavity enables the broadband Purcell enhancement together with substantial Purcell factor, benefiting from dense cavity modes with high quality factor in a wide spectral range. It has great benefit to the realization of high-efficiency quantum-dot-based single-photon sources and entangled-photon sources with less restriction on spectral match. Such topological cavity could serve as a significant building block toward the development of photonic integrated circuits with embedded quantum emitters.
Four-wave mixing is observed in a silicon W1 photonic crystal waveguide. The dispersion dependence of the idler conversion efficiency is measured and shown to be enhanced at wavelengths exhibiting slow group velocities. A 12-dB increase in the conversion efficiency is observed. Concurrently, a decrease in the conversion bandwidth is observed due to the increase in group velocity dispersion in the slow-light regime. The experimentally observed conversion efficiencies agree with the numerically modeled results.
We report the observations of spontaneous Raman scattering in silicon photonic crystal waveguides. Continuous-wave measurements of Stokes emission for both wavelength and power dependence is reported in single line-defect waveguides in hexagonal lattice photonic crystal silicon membranes. By utilizing the Bragg gap edge dispersion of the TM-like mode for pump enhancement and the TE-like fundamental mode-onset for Stokes enhancement, the Stokes emission was observed to increase by up to five times in the region of slow group velocity. The results show explicit nonlinear enhancement in a silicon photonic crystal slow-light waveguide device.
We derive and validate a set of coupled Bloch wave equations for analyzing the reflection and transmission properties of active semiconductor photonic crystal waveguides. In such devices, slow-light propagation can be used to enhance the material gain per unit length, enabling, for example, the realization of short optical amplifiers compatible with photonic integration. The coupled wave analysis is compared to numerical approaches based on the Fourier modal method and a frequency domain finite element technique. The presence of material gain leads to the build-up of a backscattered field, which is interpreted as distributed feedback effects or reflection at passive-active interfaces, depending on the approach taken. For very large material gain values, the band structure of the waveguide is perturbed, and deviations from the simple coupled Bloch wave model are found.
We demonstrate digital tuning of the slow-light regime in silicon photonic-crystal waveguides by performing atomic layer deposition of hafnium oxide. The high group-index regime was deterministically controlled (red-shift of 140 +/- 10 pm per atomic layer) without affecting the group-velocity dispersion and third-order dispersion. Additionally, differential tuning of 110 +/- 30 pm per monolayer of the slow-light TE-like and TM-like modes was observed. This passive post-fabrication process has potential applications including the tuning of chip-scale optical interconnects, as well as Raman and parametric amplification.