Slow Light in Photonic Crystal Waveguides as a Key Enabler for Future Optical Network Technologies

Abstract

All-optical technologies promise to alleviate bottleneck effects associated with electroptic conversions currently required in major network nodes. Nanophotonic structures such as photonic crystals may be used to manipulate light thereby adding intelligence in the optical physical layer. All-optical applications like optical buffering, optical switching, signal regeneration etc. are only a few applications that can be considered in future network nodes with integrated photonic crystal devices. Slow light propagation, i.e. reducing the group velocity of the propagating optical signals in photonic crystal waveguides can further enhance the signal processing capabilities of nanophotonic devices. Slow light is ideal for realizing optical buffers in integrated form while at the other hand it can lead to large increase of nonlinearities. In this paper, we focus on the capabilities and restrictions of slow-light photonic crystal waveguides in a few basic all-optical applications, like optical buffering and wavelength conversion. The role of the photonic crystal structural characteristics related to the performance of slow-light all-optical functionalities is shown. Future perspective for the visualization of PCSW slow-light devices in all-optical networks is evaluated.