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InTech eBooks

Photonic Band Gap Engineered Materials for Controlling the Group Velocity of Light

Andrea Blanco, Joseba Zub

Published Mar 21, 2012• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Unluckily, light is inherently difficult to control, not to mention how hard it is to store it.This is not only due to its speed, but also to the very nature of its basic unit, the photon, being massless and having no electric charge.A number of ingenious and diverse schemes to diminish the speed of light in a controllable fashion has been proposed, giving rise to the intriguing field of slow light.All slow light schemes are based in the same basic principle, in www.intechopen.comAdvanced Photonic Sciences 54 spite of their interdisciplinary nature: the existence of a single sharp resonance or multiple resonances (Khurgin & Tucker, 2009).As it will be justified, photonic crystal devices are, to our understanding, the most promising approach for the development of practical photonic devices based on slow light.This chapter begins by reviewing the motivation and principles of slow light, followed by a description and assessment of the different techniques to diminish the speed of light and the applications of this phenomenon.In a subsequent section the particularly promising approach of slow-light photonic crystal arrangements will be addressed.In that section, together with the fundamentals of photonic band gap materials, their simulation methods and fabrication techniques, simulations results and analysis on our designs of slow-light photonic crystal arrangements will be presented.The chapter will be concluded with an assessment of photonic band gap engineered materials as a technology for developing slowlight based devices for telecommunications and microwave photonics applications.

DOI
10.5772/25723

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Journal of Optics•Sep 24, 2010•6 citations
Unluckily, light is inherently difficult to control, not to mention how hard it is to store it.This is not only due to its speed, but also to the very nature of its basic unit, the photon, being massless and having no electric charge.A number of ingenious and diverse schemes to diminish the speed of light in a controllable fashion has been proposed, giving rise to the intriguing field of slow light.All slow light schemes are based in the same basic principle, in www.intechopen.comAdvanced Photonic Sciences 54 spite of their interdisciplinary nature: the existence of a single sharp resonance or multiple resonances (Khurgin & Tucker, 2009).As it will be justified, photonic crystal devices are, to our understanding, the most promising approach for the development of practical photonic devices based on slow light.This chapter begins by reviewing the motivation and principles of slow light, followed by a description and assessment of the different techniques to diminish the speed of light and the applications of this phenomenon.In a subsequent section the particularly promising approach of slow-light photonic crystal arrangements will be addressed.In that section, together with the fundamentals of photonic band gap materials, their simulation methods and fabrication techniques, simulations results and analysis on our designs of slow-light photonic crystal arrangements will be presented.The chapter will be concluded with an assessment of photonic band gap engineered materials as a technology for developing slowlight based devices for telecommunications and microwave photonics applications.
This paper focuses in slow light and its application in microwave photonics. It makes a brief review of microwave photonics evolution from its inception to new emerging topics. Subsequently, the principles, techniques, and applications of slow light in microwave photonics are addressed more in depth. Finally, the photonic crystal approach is presented as a promising approach to slow-light-based microwave photonics devices. The peculiar design flexibility of this approach is demonstrated with a series of simulations.
This paper focuses in slow light and its application in microwave photonics. It makes a brief review of microwave photonics evolution from its inception to new emerging topics. Subsequently, the principles, techniques, and applications of slow light in microwave photonics are addressed more in depth. Finally, the photonic crystal approach is presented as a promising approach to slow-light-based microwave photonics devices. The peculiar design flexibility of this approach is demonstrated with a series of simulations.
A driving force in the rapidly developing field of photonic crystals has been the photonic bandgap, a range of energies where the propagation of light is completely forbidden. The photonic bandgap allows the design of photonic lattices that localize, guide and bend light at sub-micron length scales, providing opportunities for the creation of miniature optical devices and integrated optical circuits to help drive the revolution in photonics. A less well known attribute of photonic crystals is their theoretical ability to slow light to a velocity of zero. This phenomenon can be achieved at the high and low energy edges of photonic stopgaps where the photonic bands are flat and light exists as a standing wave commensurate with the photonic lattice and travels at a group velocity of zero, referred to as “slow photons” herein. It has been shown theoretically that the probability of harvesting slow photons scales inversely with their group velocity. This means that a number of well known photon driven processes and devices in chemistry and physics can be enhanced by capturing this unique property of slow photons. In this paper we will look at slow photons mainly through the eye of chemistry and highlight some recent developments in this exciting and emerging field that demonstrate the potential of slow photons in materials chemistry and nanochemistry.
In the first part of this introductory review we outline the developments in photonic band gap materials from the physics of photonic band gap formation to the fabrication and potential applications of photonic crystals. We briefly describe the analogies between electron and photon localization, present a simple model of a band structure calculation and describe some of the techniques used for fabricating photonic crystals. Also some applications in the field of photonics and optical circuitry are briefly presented. In the second part, we discuss the consequences for the interaction between an atom and the light field when the former is embedded in photonic crystals of a specific type, exhibiting a specific form of a gap in the density of states. We first briefly review the standard treatment (Weisskopf – Wigner theory) in describing the dynamics of spontaneous emission in free space from first principles, and then proceed by explaining the alterations needed to properly treat the case of a two-level atom embedded in a photonic band gap material.
Modern demands for high speed telecommunication and data processing have created the need for advanced materials that allow active manipulation of light waves. Subsequent research has shown that photonic crystals provide excellent candidates to accommodate these needs. Photonic crystals are a relatively new class of materials in which the refractive index is periodic in 1, 2 or 3 dimensions. This periodicity gives rise to a photonic band gap which in turn provides selective reflection of certain wavelengths of light. Another interesting property of photonic crystals is the anomalous dispersion that occurs close to the photonic band gap (i.e. at the band edge). The anomalous dispersion causes the group velocity of light to decrease considerably, allowing stronger interactions between the travelling light and the material of which the photonic crystal consists
Research into slow light began theoretically in 1880 with the paper [1] of H A Lorentz, who is best known for his work on relativity and the speed of light. Experimental work started some 60 years later with the work of S L McCall and E L Hahn [2] who explored non-linear self-induced transparency in ruby. This field of research has burgeoned in the last 10 years, starting with the work of L Vestergaard Hau and coworkers on slow light via electromagnetically induced transparency in a Bose–Einstein condensate [3]. Many groups are now able to slow light down to a few metres per second or even stop the motion of light entirely [4]. Today, slow light – or more often `slow and fast light' – has become its own vibrant field with a strongly increasing number of publications. In broad scope, slow light research can be categorized in terms of the sort of physical mechanism used to slow down the light. One sort of slow light makes use of material dispersion. This dispersion can be the natural dispersion of the ordinary refractive index or can be the frequency dependence of some nonlinear optical process, such as electromagnetically induced transparency, coherent population oscillations, stimulated light scattering, or four-wave mixing processes. The second sort of slow light makes use of the wavelength dependence of artificially structured materials, such as photonic crystals, optical waveguides, and collections of microresonators. Material systems in which slow light has been observed include metal vapours, rare-earth-doped materials, Raman and Brillioun gain media, photonic crystals, microresonators and, more recently, metamaterials. A common feature of all of these schemes is the presence of a sharp single resonance or multiple resonances produced by an atomic transition, a resonance in a photonic structure, or in a nonlinear optical process. Current applications of slow light include a series of attractive topics in optical information processing, such as optical data storage, optical memories, quantum information devices, and optical communication systems in which the use of slow light will allow all-optical processing with less wasted heat. To implement these applications, devices such as buffers, memories, interferometers and switches that utilize slow light need to be developed. Future challenges include the need for improved coupling of light into slow light modes, overcoming propagation losses, and mitigating the influence of large dispersion of the group velocity. The collection of papers in this special issue of Journal of Optics features a broad spectrum of articles that highlight actual developments in many of the material types and schemes described above. It represents therefore an excellent up to date snapshot of the current state of the field of slow light research. References [1] Lorentz H A 1880 Uber die Beziehung zwischen der Fortpflanzung des Lichtes und der Körperdichte Wiedemann Ann. 9 641–64 [2] McCall S L and Hahn E L 1967 Self-induced transparency by pulsed coherent light Phys. Rev. Lett. 18 908–11 [3] Vestergaard Hau L, Harris S E, Dutton Z and Behroozi C H 1999 Nature 397 594 [4] Philips D F, Fleischhauer A, Mair A, Walsworth R L and Lukin M D 2001 Storage of light in atomic vapor Phys. Rev. Lett. 86 783–6