Photonic crystal fibers and fiber lasers have been two of the most rapidly evolving areas of optics and photonics over the past few years. Recent developments in the field of photonic crystal fibers are enabling new ways to generate, transform, and deliver light, and have significant implications for fiber laser design and applications. We review the ways in which photonic crystal fibers are af...

We report the first theoretical investigation of passive mode-locking in photonic crystal mode-locked lasers. Related work has investigated coupled-resonator-optical-waveguide structures in the regime of active mode-locking [Opt. Express 13, 4539-4553 (2005)]. An extensive numerical investigation of the influence of key parameters of the active sections and the photonic crystal cavity on the la...

The light harvesting efficiency of dye-sensitized photoelectrodes was enhanced by coupling a TiO(2) photonic crystal layer to a conventional film of TiO(2) nanoparticles. In addition to acting as a dielectric mirror, the inverse opal photonic crystal caused a significant change in dye absorbance which depended on the position of the stop band. Absorbance was suppressed at wavelengths shorter th...

The fields of photonic crystals and plasmonics have taken two different approaches to increasing light−matter interaction. Photonic crystal cavities increase temporal confinement of light in a material, as represented by their high quality factor, while plasmonic structures increase spatial confinement, as represented by their low mode volume. However, the inability to simultaneously attain ext...

Photonic crystals are periodically engineered “materials” which are the photonic analogues of electronic crystals. Much like electronic crystal, photonic crystal materials can have a variety of crystal symmetries, such as simple-cubic, closed-packed, Wurtzite and diamond-like crystals. These structures were first proposed in late 1980’s. However, due mainly to fabrication difficulties, working ...

We present a novel time-domain experimental approach to the study of the dynamics of surface electromagnetic wave propagation in a two-dimensional photonic crystal. A surface plasmon polariton is launched by ultrafast laser pulses and propagates into a photonic crystal, the dynamics of which are measured by an interferometric cross-correlation method. Plasmon photonic stopgaps are characterized...

We use evolutionary algorithms to design photonic crystal structures with large band gaps. Starting from randomly generated photonic crystals, the algorithm yielded a photonic crystal with a band gap sdefined as the gap to midgap ratiod as large as 0.3189. This band gap is an improvement of 12.5% over the best human design using the same index contrast platform. © 2005 American Institute of Phy...

Photonic crystal slabs are a versatile and important platform for molding the flow of light. In this thesis, we consider ways to control the emission of light from photonic crystal slab structures, specifically focusing on directional, asymmetric emission, and on emitting light with interesting topological features. First, we develop a general coupled-mode theory formalism to derive bounds on t...

We present a theoretical study of electromagnetic surface waves localized at an interface separating a conventional uniform medium and a semi-infinite 1-D photonic crystal made of alternate left-handed metamaterial and right-handed material which we refer to as left-handed photonic crystal. We find novel type of surface mode’s structure, the so-called surface Tamm states and demonstrate that th...

Photonic crystal cavities can localize light into nanoscale volumes with high quality factors. This permits a strong interaction between light and matter, which is important for the construction of classical light sources with improved properties (e.g., low threshold lasers) and of nonclassical light sources (such as single and entangled photon sources) that are crucial pieces of hardware of qu...