Regulation of fast and slow light characteristics of the add-drop ring-resonator employing an assisted ring.

Abstract

We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally that the fast and slow light characteristics of the add-drop ring-resonator (ADRR) can be regulated by introducing an assisted ring. This novel geometry is named ring-assisted add-drop ring-resonator (RA-ADRR). When the assisted ring is under-coupled, the fast and slow light characteristics of through and drop ports of the RA-ADRR will be reversed, which is different from the coupled resonator induced transparency (CRIT) studied previously. With the decrease of loss, the dispersion peak (dip) of the two ports will grow up towards the opposite directions and finally the inversion occurs. Meanwhile, we find that by increasing the circumference of the assisted ring, the dispersion of the two ports could be improved proportionally. The experimental results show that the maximum group delays of the through and drop ports are 115 ns and -485 ns, respectively. This novel phenomenon could greatly enhance the sensitivity of slow light interferometers and also has potential applications in optical communication, network, filtering and switching.