Photonic valence/conduction subbands in optically generated photonic quantum wells: Tunable optical-delay line application

Abstract

It has been shown that, in the absence of a control laser field, functional photonic superstructures can act as homogeneous photonic band gap structures formed via uniform corrugations of their background refractive indexes. When some sections of these structures are illuminated with such a laser, those sections become resonant (active) photonic band structures with higher refractive index contrast, forming photonic heterostructures. In this paper we study how by controlling the phase of quantum interference processes in such structures one can control alignment of such heterostructures, coherently generating photonic quantum wells with either conduction- or valencelike subbands (resonant transmission states). We show the energies of these subbands can be tuned by the control laser and demonstrate that their longitudinal mode profiles follow one-by-one correspondence with the envelope functions of the electron or hole subbands in electronic quantum well structures. In particular, we show how such photonic quantum wells can act as optically tunable time-delay lines, capable of increasing delay of a signal passing through them significantly via laser-induced control of optical confinements of the photonic subbands.