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Reports on Progress in Physics

Manipulating light with strongly modulated photonic crystals

Masaya Notomi

Published Aug 16, 2010• 437 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Recently, strongly modulated photonic crystals, fabricated by the state-of-the-art semiconductor nanofabrication process, have realized various novel optical properties.This paper describes the way in which they differ from other optical media, and clarifies what they can do.In particular, three important issues are considered: light confinement, frequency dispersion and spatial dispersion.First, I describe the latest status and impact of ultra-strong light confinement in a wavelength-cubic volume achieved in photonic crystals.Second, the extreme reduction in the speed of light is reported, which was achieved as a result of frequency dispersion management.Third, strange negative refraction in photonic crystals is introduced, which results from their unique spatial dispersion, and it is clarified how this leads to perfect imaging.The last two sections are devoted to applications of these novel properties.First, I report the fact that strong light confinement and huge light-matter interaction enhancement make strongly modulated photonic crystals promising for on-chip all-optical processing, and present several examples including all-optical switches/memories and optical logics.As a second application, it is shown that the strong light confinement and slow light in strongly modulated photonic crystals enable the adiabatic tuning of light, which leads to various novel ways of controlling light, such as adiabatic frequency conversion, efficient optomechanics systems, photon memories and photons pinning.

DOI
10.1088/0034-4885/73/9/096501

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Recently, strongly modulated photonic crystals, fabricated by the state-of-the-art semiconductor nanofabrication process, have realized various novel optical properties.This paper describes the way in which they differ from other optical media, and clarifies what they can do.In particular, three important issues are considered: light confinement, frequency dispersion and spatial dispersion.First, I describe the latest status and impact of ultra-strong light confinement in a wavelength-cubic volume achieved in photonic crystals.Second, the extreme reduction in the speed of light is reported, which was achieved as a result of frequency dispersion management.Third, strange negative refraction in photonic crystals is introduced, which results from their unique spatial dispersion, and it is clarified how this leads to perfect imaging.The last two sections are devoted to applications of these novel properties.First, I report the fact that strong light confinement and huge light-matter interaction enhancement make strongly modulated photonic crystals promising for on-chip all-optical processing, and present several examples including all-optical switches/memories and optical logics.As a second application, it is shown that the strong light confinement and slow light in strongly modulated photonic crystals enable the adiabatic tuning of light, which leads to various novel ways of controlling light, such as adiabatic frequency conversion, efficient optomechanics systems, photon memories and photons pinning.
This article overviews our recent studies of ultrahigh-Q and ultrasmall photonic-crystal cavities, and their applications to nonlinear optical processing and novel adiabatic control of light. First, we show our latest achievements of ultrahigh-Q photonic-crystal nanocavities, and present extreme slow-light demonstration. Next, we show all-optical bistable switching and memory operations based on enhanced optical nonlinearity in these nanocavities with extremely low power, and discuss their applicability for realizing chip-scale all-optical logic, such as flip-flop. Finally, we introduce adiabatic tuning of high-Q nanocavities, which leads to novel wavelength conversion and another type of optical memories.
Chapter 1 IntroductionUltimate inhibition of spontaneous emission can be achieved in artificial periodic structures with tailor-made forbidden frequency bands [5].These periodic structures known as photonic crystals consist of different dielectric materials, where the index of refraction varies on length scales comparable to the wavelength of light.Therefore, the periodicity of photonic crystals is about 1000 times as large as that of atomic crystals.Light with specific frequencies is forbidden to propagate along certain directions by wave interference, similarly to Bragg diffraction of x-rays in atomic crystals.Such forbidden frequency ranges are called stopgaps.The larger the contrast of the refractive index between the two materials of a photonic crystal, the more strongly light is influenced, and the broader the stopgaps become.It was predicted in 1987 that an extreme situation may be feasible when light cannot propagate along any direction [6, 7].This situation is called a photonic bandgap.Spontaneous emission is completely inhibited for frequencies inside such a bandgap and, conversely, strongly enhanced for frequencies outside the bandgap.Photonic crystals, therefore, provide an ultimate tool for manipulating with light, which is of extreme interest for scientists and engineers [8, 9].Recent advances in nanotechnology have resulted in ability to synthesize semiconductor structures with dimensions of a few nanometers.Due to the finite sizes, electron-hole pairs (excitons) can be confined in these nanostructures, which leads to discrete excitonic energy levels.The nanocrystals that confine excitons in spherical or circular spaces are known as quantum dots.The discrete structure of the energy levels results in advantageous optical properties of these nanocrystals: narrow and tunable emission spectra.The emission frequencies can be tuned by varying the nanocrystal size: the smaller the size, the higher the emission frequency.These properties make the nanocrystals very promising elementary emitters for new experiments and devices [10, 11]. Outline of the thesisThis thesis describes time-and angle-resolved experiments, in which effects of threedimensional (3D) photonic crystals on spontaneous emission of embedded light sources (quantum dots and dye molecules) were studied.The thesis is organized as follows:In Chapter 2 we review the theoretical basics of the interaction between light and matter.We discuss the factors triggering the process of spontaneous emission and consider in detail the time evolution of the excited state of the emitter that interacts with the quantized 1.
Quantum-based communication systems can potentially achieve the ultimate security from eavesdropping and greatly reduce the operating powers on chip. Light-speed transmission, noise immunity, and low noise properties make photons indispensable for quantum communication to transfer a quantum state through a transmission line. Furthermore, the field of silicon nanophotonics is fast growing field which is driven by the attractive and promising improvements it has to offer in high speed communication systems and on chip optical interconnects. Consequently, there is a high demand to develop the building blocks for photon manipulation in silicon nanophotonic circuits. The goal of the work is to enable high performance optoelectronic computing and communication systems that overcome the barriers of electronics and dramatically enhance the performance of circuits and systems. We will focus our attention on solving some of the issues with the current systems regarding photon storage, routing, isolation, switching, and energy conversion. We realize a continuously tunable optical memory which breaks the time-bandwidth limit by more than thirty times. This enabled the storage of ultra-short pulses of light for hundreds of picoseconds. Also, we investigate on-chip photon scattering when transmitted through micro-scale optical cavities. In addition, we develop novel dynamic quantum mechanical models that predict quantum-like behavior of single and multi-photon wavepackets. Furthermore, we report for the first time that efficient red shifts in silicon are achievable with free carrier injection which generally produces blue wavelength shifts. We realize adiabatic wavelength conversion and discrete photonic transitions of single photons in silicon cavities. Moreover, we demonstrate a basic quantum network on chip with an on-chip photon source. We present a novel design for CMOS compatible optical isolator on silicon chip using a system of active cavities. And finally, we analyze a novel ultra-fast broadband modulator in silicon based on free-carrier absorption effect in SOI waveguides integrated with Schottky diodes.
In this paper we review our recent works in developing photonic crystals and nanophotonic structures for the control of light. We show that dynamic crystal structures, in which the refractive index of the material is modulated by a small extent while a photon pulse is in the crystal, can be used to stop, store and even time-reverse light pulses [ 1][ 2][ 3]. We also show that by incorporating magneto-optical effects into the crystal structures, the reciprocity of light can be broken, resulting in uni-directional devices that are extremely compact [ 4]. And finally, by exploiting sub-wavelength electromagnetic resonances in meta structures, new meta-materials can be created. These materials feature frequency-independent refractive index that is controlled by geometry and can be arbitrarily large [ 5]. Such materials can be of importance for integrated optics and image sensing applications.
Focus Serial: Frontiers of Nonlinear Optics Nonlinear photonic-crystal microresonators offer unique fundamental ways of enhancing a variety of nonlinear optical processes. This enhancement improves the performance of nonlinear optical devices to such an extent that their corresponding operation powers and switching times are suitable for their implementation in realistic ultrafast integrated optical devices. Here, we review three different nonlinear optical phenomena that can be strongly enhanced in photonic crystal microcavities. First, we discuss a system in which this enhancement has been successfully demonstrated both theoretically and experimentally, namely, a photonic crystal cavity showing optical bistability properties. In this part, we also present the physical basis for this dramatic improvement with respect to the case of traditional nonlinear devices based on nonlinear Fabry-Perot etalons. Secondly, we show how nonlinear photonic crystal cavities can be also used to obtain complete second-harmonic frequency conversion at very low input powers. Finally, we demonstrate that the nonlinear susceptibility of materials can be strongly modified via the so-called Purcell effect, present in the resonant cavities under study.