Wideband slow light with low dispersion in asymmetric slotted photonic crystal waveguides

A new procedure of designing slotted photonic crystal waveguides is proposed to achieve slow light with improved normalized delay-bandwidth product and low group velocity dispersion that is suitable for both the W1 defect mode and the slot mode. The lateral symmetry of the waveguide in our study is broken by shifting the air holes periodically along the slot axis. The conversion of the 'flat band" from Land-up slow light to band down slow light is achieved for the W1 defect mode. The group index curves of the W1 mode change from U-like to step-like and the group indices of 47, 67 and 130 are obtained with the bandwidth over 7.2, 4.8, and 2.3 nm around 1550 nm, respectively. We also obtain the group indices of 42, 55, and 108 for the slot mode with the bandwidth over 6.2, 5.6, and 2.2 nm, respectively Then the low dispersion slow light propagation is numerically demonstrated by the finite difference time-domain method. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America