Flatband Slow Light in Asymmetric Line-Defect Photonic Crystal Waveguide Featuring Low Group Velocity and Dispersion

In this paper, an asymmetric photonic crystal (PC) waveguide is proposed for slow light transmission. A row of air holes is removed to form a line-defect waveguide, and the lateral symmetry of the waveguide is broken by shifting the holes in the PC cladding on one side along the waveguide axis. Two structural parameters are carefully adjusted: the amount of shift compared with the array of holes in the cladding on the other side, and the radius of the holes closest to the waveguide core in the shifted PC cladding. In the asymmetric waveguide, it is possible to obtain flat band modes with low group velocity (c/50) and low dispersion (on the order of 10⁴ ps²/km) over a signal bandwidth of 40 GHz. The delay-bandwidth product (DBP) of the proposed slow-light device is analyzed and compared with the DBP of the PC waveguides reported in literatures. We find that our structure yields a significant increase in DBP, and improves the effective bandwidth in which we can obtain slow modes with both low group velocity and vanishing dispersion.