Broadband and low loss slow light in SOI photonic crystal waveguides

Abstract

The phenomenon of slow light in photonic crystal waveguides is discussed. Rather than maximising the slowdown factor, we believe that slow light is only useful for all-optical data processing if there is sufficient bandwidth, hence a slowdown factor of order 10-100 is more favourable, given that it enables bandwidths of order 1 THz or more to be realised. As a specific example, we demonstrate a slowdown factor of 12 (group index of 25) over a bandwidth of 2.5 THz in a W2 photonic crystal waveguide. Furthermore, slow light can only be useful if it is not compromised by losses. Due to recent improvements in our technology, we can now achieve losses of order 4 dB/cm, which is amongst the best reported for W1 photonic crystal waveguides.