A study on photonic crystal slab waveguide with absolute photonic band gap

Abstract

Most of the conventional photonic crystal (PhC) slab waveguides have a photonic bandgap (PBG) only for one polarization state of two orthogonal polarization states. In this paper, westudy on an absolute PBG that can realize PBG for both polarizations in the same frequency range anddemonstrate that an absolute PBG can be realized in PhC structures proposed here. In the numericalanalysis and design of PhC structures, we employ the two-dimensional finite element method (FEM)based on the effective index method (EIM). First, we propose two-types of PhC structures with anabsolute PBG and show that a steering type PhC is superior to an air-ring type PhC to obtain a widebandabsolute PBG. It is also shown that the optimized steering type PhC has the absolute PBG whosebandwidth of 164 nm at the center wavelength of 1.55 μm. Furthermore, we design PhC waveguidesbased on the obtained PhC structure having an absolute PBG in order to obtain guided modes for bothpolarization states within the same wavelength range. The transmission properties of the designed PhCwaveguides are also investigated and 60 degree bends which are required in compact photonic circuitsare designed. From these results, the possibility to realize compact polarization multiplexing photonicdevices is shown.

Keywords

• photonic crystal
• absolute photonic band gap
• photonic crystal waveguide
• finite elementmethod
• effective index method