Superprism phenomena in photonic crystals: toward microscale lightwave circuits

The superprism phenomenon, the dispersion of light 500 times stronger than the dispersion in conventional prisms, was demonstrated at optical wavelengths in photonic crystals (PC's) fabricated on Si. Drastic light-beam steering in the PC's was achieved by slightly changing the incident wavelength or angle. The scanning span reached 50/spl deg/ with only a 1% shift of incident wavelength, and reached 140/spl deg/ with only a 14/spl deg/ shift of the incident angle at wavelengths around 1 /spl mu/m. The propagation direction was quantitatively interpreted in terms of highly anisotropic dispersion surfaces derived by photonic band calculation. The physics behind this demonstration will open a novel field called photonic crystalline optics. The application of these phenomena promises to enable the fabrication of integrated microscale lightwave circuits (/spl mu/LC's) on Si with large scale integrated (LSI)-compatible lithography techniques. Such /spl mu/LC's will allow more efficient use of wavelength resources when used in wavelength multiplexers/demultiplexers or dispersion compensators by enabling lower loss and broader bandwidth.

[1]  Emil Wolf,et al.  Principles of Optics: Contents , 1999 .

[2]  P. Yeh,et al.  Electromagnetic propagation in periodic stratified media. I. General theory , 1977 .

[3]  E. Yablonovitch,et al.  Inhibited spontaneous emission in solid-state physics and electronics. , 1987, Physical review letters.

[4]  Reginald W. James,et al.  The Optical principles of the diffraction of X-rays , 1948 .

[5]  Amnon Yariv,et al.  InGaAsP Photonic Band Gap Crystal Membrane Microresonators , 1998 .

[6]  C. Soukoulis.  Photonic Band Gap Materials , 1996 .

[7]  Alexander Figotin,et al.  The Computation of Spectra of Some 2D Photonic Crystals , 1997 .

[8]  H. Takahashi,et al.  Wavelength multiplexer based on SiO/sub 2/-Ta/sub 2/O/sub 5/ arrayed-waveguide grating , 1994 .

[9]  K. Hill,et al.  Photosensitivity in optical fiber waveguides: Application to reflection filter fabrication , 1978 .

[10]  T. Tamir,et al.  Group velocity in space-time periodic media , 1971 .

[11]  John,et al.  Strong localization of photons in certain disordered dielectric superlattices. , 1987, Physical review letters.

[12]  H Kogelnik,et al.  Optical-pulse equalization of low-dispersion transmission in single-mode fibers in the 1.3 - 1.7-microm spectral region. , 1980, Optics letters.

[13]  Masaya Notomi,et al.  Photonic crystals for micro lightwave circuits using wavelength-dependent angular beam steering , 1999 .

[14]  E. Jones,et al.  Highly dispersive photonic band-gap prism. , 1996, Optics letters.

[15]  Shojiro Kawakami,et al.  Fabrication of submicrometre 3D periodic structures composed of Si/SiO2 , 1997 .

[16]  Chan,et al.  Existence of a photonic gap in periodic dielectric structures. , 1990, Physical review letters.

[17]  Y. Tanabe,et al.  Photonic Band Using Vector Spherical Waves : I. Various Properties of Bloch Electric Fields and Heavy Photons , 1996 .

[18]  Masaya Notomi,et al.  Self-collimating phenomena in photonic crystals , 1999 .

[19]  Russell.  Interference of integrated Floquet-Bloch waves. , 1986, Physical review. A, General physics.

[20]  Pochi Yeh,et al.  Electromagnetic propagation in birefringent layered media , 1979 .

[21]  J. Joannopoulos,et al.  High Transmission through Sharp Bends in Photonic Crystal Waveguides. , 1996, Physical review letters.

[22]  Henry I. Smith,et al.  Photonic-bandgap microcavities in optical waveguides , 1997, Nature.

[23]  Timothy A. Birks,et al.  Photonic Bloch waves and photonic band gaps , 1995 .

[24]  Jonathan P. Dowling,et al.  Anomalous Index of Refraction in Photonic Bandgap Materials , 1994 .

[25]  Thomas F. Krauss,et al.  Two-dimensional photonic-bandgap structures operating at near-infrared wavelengths , 1996, Nature.

[26]  R. Zengerle,et al.  Light Propagation in Singly and Doubly Periodic Planar Waveguides , 1987 .

[27]  100-nm-Scale Alignment using Laser Beam Diffraction Pattern Observation Techniques and Wafer Fusion for Realizing Three-Dimensional Photonic Crystal Structure , 1998 .

[28]  Shojiro Kawakami,et al.  PROPAGATION OF LIGHT BEAMS ALONG LINE DEFECTS FORMED IN A-SI/SIO2 THREE-DIMENSIONAL PHOTONIC CRYSTALS : FABRICATION AND OBSERVATION , 1999 .

[29]  F. Ouellette.  Dispersion cancellation using linearly chirped Bragg grating filters in optical waveguides. , 1987, Optics letters.

[30]  C. Dragone.  Efficient N*N star couplers using Fourier optics , 1989 .

[31]  Shojiro Kawakami,et al.  MECHANISM OF SHAPE FORMATION OF THREE-DIMENSIONAL PERIODIC NANOSTRUCTURES BY BIAS SPUTTERING , 1999 .

[32]  Masaya Notomi,et al.  Superprism Phenomena in Photonic Crystals , 1998 .

[33]  A. Figotin,et al.  Two-dimensional tunable photonic crystals , 1998 .