Design and applications of strongly dispersive photonic crystal structures

Abstract

The opportunity to manipulate optical properties of materials through fabrication is the unique capability offered by photonic crystals. Among different directions to exploit the possibilities in this field, there have been recent research activities to engineer the dispersive properties of photonic crystals to change the propagation properties of waves passing through these periodic structures. To provide an efficient way to implement such devices, an approximate modeling technique will be used to simplify the analysis and design process for dispersive photonic crystal devices. Furthermore, the issue of efficient coupling to dispersive photonic crystal modes which is crucial for practical implementation of these devices will be addressed. Here, in particular, we will focus on employing the dispersive properties of photonic crystals to realize compact optical spectrometers and wavelength demultiplexers. We will show that by combining multiple dispersive properties (i.e., negative diffraction and the superprism effect) it is possible to enhance the performance of devices targeted for such applications. The potentials of these photonic crystal devices to meet the requirements of current and future applications in optical information processing and integrated optical sensing will be discussed.