Dispersive photonic crystal dispersion and its photonic applications

Summary form only given. Photonic crystal has emerged as a new class of photonic materials capable of on-chip localization and manipulation of light. These effects are based on the existence of a large, absolute photonic band gap (PBG) and are expected to impact highly efficient active devices (such as lasers and LEDs) as well as miniaturized passive devices (such as guides, bends, splitters) applications. More recently, it is realized that photonic dispersion away and near the PBG regime exhibits many interesting optical properties. In particular, its anisotropic, nonlinear and birefringent property can all be tailored through nano-structure engineering. This design flexibility is a very attractive feature for realizing integrated optical and optoelectronic chip. In this talk, examples of such a new class of photonic devices will be described. Near a photonic band edge, the frequency-wavevector dispersion is very nonlinear, which can lead to a highly dispersive prism. The slow down in speed-of-light at the band edge may enhance material absorption by order-of-magnitude. Interesting application of this effect on light-emitting devices and inter-subband based devices will be discussed. In the allowed band spectral regime, there exists a large birefringent effect, yielding an efficient and compact polarizer and rotator.