Interplay between disorder and local field effects in photonic crystal waveguides

Abstract

We introduce a theory to describe disorder-induced scattering in photonic crystal waveguides, specifically addressing the influence of local field effects and scattering within high-index-contrast perturbations. Local field effects are shown to increase the predicted disorder-induced scattering loss and result in significant resonance shifts of the waveguide mode. We demonstrate that two types of frequency shifts can be expected, a mean frequency shift and a RMS frequency shift, both acting in concert to blueshift and broaden the nominal band structure. For a representative waveguide, we predict substantial meV frequency shifts and band structure broadening for a telecommunications operating frequency, even for state of the art fabrication. The disorder-induced broadening is found to increase as the propagation frequency approaches the slow light regime (mode edge) due to restructuring of the electric field distribution. These findings have a dramatic impact on high-index-contrast nanoscale waveguides, and, for photonic crystal waveguides, suggest that the nominal slow-light mode edge may not even exist. Furthermore, our results shed new light on why it has hitherto been impossible to observe the very slow light regime for photonic crystal waveguides.

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References in corpus (2)

• Experimental realization of highly-efficient broadband coupling of single quantum dots to a photonic crystal waveguide
• Disorder-induced coherent scattering in slow-light photonic crystal waveguides

Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Theory and experiments of disorder-induced resonance shifts and mode edge broadening in deliberately disordered photonic crystal waveguides
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• Effect of hole-shape irregularities on photonic crystal waveguides
• High-Q coupled resonances on a PhC waveguide using a tapered nanofiber with high coupling efficiency
• Reducing Disorder-Induced Backscattering in Photonic Crystal Waveguides through Inverse Design
• Green's function expansion for multiple coupled optical resonators with finite retardation using quasinormal modes
• Mode expansions in the quantum electrodynamics of photonic media with disorder