Theory of carrier depletion and light amplification in active slow light photonic crystal waveguides.

Slow-light Mach–Zehnder modulators based on Si photonic crystals

Mach-Zehnder optical modulators are the key devices for high-speed electrical-to-optical conversion in Si photonics. Si rib waveguides with a p-n diode structure operated in the carrier depletion mode have mainly been developed as their phase shifters. Their length is usually longer than millimeters due to the limited change in the refractive index due to the carrier depletion in a Si p-n diode...

Ultrafast slow-light tuning beyond the carrier lifetime using photonic crystal waveguides.

We demonstrate ultrafast delay tuning of a slow-light pulse with a response time <10 ps. This is achieved using two types of slow light: dispersion-compensated slow light for the signal pulse, and low-dispersion slow light to enhance nonlinear effects of the control pulse. These two types of slow light are generated simultaneously in Si lattice-shifted photonic crystal waveguides, arising from ...

Erratum: Slow-light-enhanced gain in active photonic crystal waveguides.

Passive photonic crystals have been shown to exhibit a multitude of interesting phenomena, including slow-light propagation in line-defect waveguides. It was suggested that by incorporating an active material in the waveguide, slow light could be used to enhance the effective gain of the material, which would have interesting application prospects, for example enabling ultra-compact optical amp...

Observations of four-wave mixing in slow-light silicon photonic crystal waveguides

Four-wave mixing is observed in a silicon W1 photonic crystal waveguide. The dispersion dependence of the idler conversion efficiency is measured and shown to be enhanced at wavelengths exhibiting slow group velocities. A 12-dB increase in the conversion efficiency is observed. Concurrently, a decrease in the conversion bandwidth is observed due to the increase in group velocity dispersion in t...

Nonlinear Gain Saturation in Active Slow Light Photonic Crystal Waveguides