Hamiltonian optics formalism for microring resonator structures with varying ring resonances

Abstract

We develop a Hamiltonian optics formalism to quantitatively analyze a recently proposed scheme for increasing the delay-time-bandwidth product for microring resonator structures with varying ring resonances [Yang and Sipe, Opt. Lett. 32, 918 (2007)]. This theory is formally compact, simple and physically intuitive. We compare this formalism with the more rigorous transfer matrix method, and conclude that the Hamiltonian optics formalism correctly gives the average dispersion, which essentially determines the group delay as well as the dispersive distortion for pulses in the ps regime or longer.