Diffraction-induced laser pulse splitting in a linear photonic crystal

Abstract

We demonstrate analytically a linear optical property of photonic crystals---diffraction-induced incident optical pulse splitting in two pulses propagating with different group velocities in a linear photonic crystal. The reason of this phenomenon is in spatially inhomogeneous field localization within the photonic crystal in case of the Bragg diffraction at the Laue scheme. The field of the fast first pulse is mainly localized within low refractive index layers, whereas the slow second pulse field is mostly in high refractive index layers. Changing optical properties of either high-index or low-index layers of periodical multilayer structure, it is possible to control parameters of each propagating pulse separately. The distance between two transmitted and two diffractively reflected output pulses can be controlled by varying the crystal thickness and modulation depth of the refractive index.