Ultra-wide band dispersionless slow light waveguides

Abstract

In conventional slow light waveguide, the delay time of signal in a waveguide is inversely proportional to its bandwidth. As a measure of storage density of optical pulse, the delay-bandwidth product is limited to a small constant depending on waveguiding approach. Breaking the limit is fundamental problem in optical signal and quantum information processing fields. The solution to this problem is becoming increasingly important, especially with high-speed signal processing system. So far, there have been neither practical nor realizable techniques that can solve this problem. In this paper, we propose a mechanism to explore the possibility for breaking the delay-bandwidth limit by using ultra-flat photonic band cluster. We show that based on multiple micro-cavities having corresponding multiple ultra-flat photonic bands, a slow light with arbitrary bandwidth in frequency can be achieved with ultraslow group velocity and ultralow group velocity dispersion, leading to a broken delay-bandwidth limit. This work demonstrates that arbitrary bandwidth dispersionless slow light can be realized with a two-dimensional multiple-microcavity photonic-crystal line-defect waveguide.