Enhancing the emission efficiency in photonic crystal waveguide with coupled waveguide arrays

Abstract

We propose a system of enhanced emission efficiency by employing coupled waveguide arrays to a single-mode photonic crystal waveguide. The FDTD simulation results show that, when the coupled waveguide arrays are placed properly at the exit plane of the single-mode photonic crystal waveguide, the output light can be split into many light beams, and the interference of these light beams can produce a focusing emission beam, which greatly enhances the emission efficiency. In addition, when the row number of the waveguide arrays is larger than a certain value (2N=8), the state of the emission is nearly steady and the most compact structure can be obtained. This type of photonic crystal has potential applications in near-field optics or integrated optics.