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An FDTD Analysis of Nonlinear Photonic Crystal Wav
An FDTD Analysis of Nonlinear Photonic Crystal Wav
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i . s . m a k s y m o v, l . f. m a r s a l∗ a n d j . p a l l a r è s
Departament d’Enginyeria Electrònica, Elèctrica i Automàtica, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Campus
Sescelades, Avda. Paı̈sos Catalans 26, 43007 Tarragona, Spain
(∗ author for correspondence: E-mail: lluis.marsal@urv.net)
Abstract. We present a modelling technique for analyzing dispersion characteristics of nonlinear pho-
tonic crystal waveguides. This technique combines the nonlinear finite-difference time-domain method,
based on the numerical simulation of oscillating dipole radiation, with the super cell approach and
the periodic boundary conditions. The technique presented makes it possible to calculate the dispersion
characteristics of Kerr-like nonlinear photonic crystals waveguides made by removing some scatterers. A
numerical tool based on this technique can be used to design various components for integrated optical
circuits.
Key words: finite-difference time-domain method, Kerr-like nonlinear material, photonic crystal,
red-shift, waveguide
1. Introduction
paper, we extend the work carried out and calculate the dispersion char-
acteristics of the line-defect and coupled-cavity nonlinear photonic crystal
waveguides.
The present paper is organized as follows. First, we outline the basic
principles of the FDTD method. Second, we test our algorithm by calcu-
lating the dispersion characteristics of the defect-free nonlinear photonic
crystal. Next, we present the dispersion characteristics of the line-defect
and coupled-cavity nonlinear photonic crystal waveguides. Finally, we dis-
cuss how the nonlinearity influences the dispersion characteristics and how
the operating power of a device based on the structures considered can be
reduced.
2. Theory
∂H (r, t)
∇ × E (r, t) = −µµ0 , (1)
∂t
where E (r, t) and H (r, t) are electric and magnetic fields, respectively;
D (r, t) is the electric displacement, PE (r, t) is the polarization field of the
electric dipole, which can be written as (Sakoda 2001)
In the equations above, ε0 and µ0 are the dielectric permittivity and the
magnetic permeability of vacuum.
Now we can solve Equations (1) and (2) by discretizing them both in
space and time. In order to define the dielectric constant profile, the sub-
gridding is used. It reduces the computation domain and saves more com-
putation time when calculating with the FDTD.
In the nonlinear case the electric field E (r, t) must be calculated from the
constitutive Equation (4). In order to do so, the following cubic equation
has to be solved analytically (Tran 1995)
(3) 2 3
χ · A + 2Re ε ∗ χ (3) · A2 + |ε|2 · A − |D (r, t)| = 0,
2
(5)
ε02
where A = |E (r, t)|2 is the modulus square of the electric field. Because the
modulus square can be neither negative nor complex, only a real positive
root is selected. Once A is obtained, the electric field E (r, t) is calculated
as
D (r, t)
E (r, t) = . (6)
ε + χ (3) · A ε0
The fields E (r, t) and H (r, t) are recorded and used to calculate the elec-
tromagnetic energy density emitted from the dipole (Jackson 1975)
W = 21 E (r, t) · D (r, t) + µµ0 |H (r, t)|2 . (7)
where a is the lattice vector and k is the wave vector under consideration.
152 I.S. MAKSYMOV ET AL.
From Equation (11) we obtain χ (3) = 4.4 × 10−19 m2 /V2 . This value will be
used in the following section.
Fig. 2(a) shows the geometry of the line-defect nonlinear photonic crystal
waveguide, which is made by removing a row of rods in the X direction
of the first BZ. In order to calculate the dispersion characteristics of such
a structure, the super cell approach is used. As Fig. 2(a) shows, the super
cell (20 × 140 cells) takes both the defect and the surrounding rows of rods
into account. The material parameters are equal to those in the previous
section. The radius of each rod is r = 0.18a.
Fig. 2(b) shows the dispersion characteristics calculated for the X direc-
tion of the first BZ. We notice that the defect mode no longer exists within
ωa
the forbidden band gap for 2π c
> 0.4 and, therefore, we do not show this
range of frequencies. The solid line corresponds to the linear dispersion
characteristic whereas the dot and dash lines correspond to the nonlin-
ear dispersion characteristics calculated at incident intensities of 19 and
ka
26 GW/cm2 , respectively. These values have been calculated at 2π = 0. It can
be seen that in the nonlinear regime the dispersion curves are red-shifted
with regard to the linear regime.
154 I.S. MAKSYMOV ET AL.
Fig. 1. (a) Geometry of the 2-D nonlinear photonic crystal. Grey region denotes the cell used for the
calculation of the dispersion characteristic. Black corresponds to the Kerr-like material whereas white
corresponds to the background. (b) The dispersion characteristics calculated for the linear (solid line)
and nonlinear (dot and dash lines) regimes.
Fig. 2. (a) Geometry of the line-defect nonlinear photonic crystal. Grey region denotes the super cell
used for the calculation of the dispersion characteristic. (b) The dispersion characteristics calculated for
the linear (solid line) and nonlinear (dot and dash lines) regimes.
In order to carry out the calculation, the super cell is divided into 60 ×
140 cells. The calculation usually takes less time because the dispersion
curves are almost flat and therefore small range of frequency is considered.
156 I.S. MAKSYMOV ET AL.
Fig. 3. (a) Geometry of the coupled-cavity nonlinear photonic crystal. Grey region denotes the super
cell used for the calculation of the dispersion characteristic. (b) The dispersion characteristics calculated
for the linear (solid line) and nonlinear (dot and dash lines) regimes.
FDTD ANALYSIS OF NONLINEAR PHOTONIC CRYSTAL WAVEGUIDES 157
The dispersion curves calculated with our method are shown in Fig. 3(b).
The solid line corresponds to the linear dispersion characteristic whereas
the dot and dash lines correspond to the nonlinear dispersion characteris-
tics. The incident intensities are 9.5 and 16 GW/cm2 . These values are cal-
ka
culated at 2π = 0. As we can see, for the nonlinear regimes there are again
ka
red-shifts. A tiny blue-shift at 2π = 0.5 is a numerical artefact due to a weak
numerical noise that appears while calculating the electromagnetic energy
density at the edge of the first BZ.
Let us discuss the properties of the red-shift that we have seen in the pre-
vious subsections. First, we notice that the red-shift is not uniform along
the X direction of the first BZ (e.g. in Fig. 2 for k = 0 it is larger than
ka
for 2π = 0.4). It can be explained by a difference in the group velocities,
which correspond to different k-points. As it was shown earlier (Yariv et al.
1999; Panoiu et al. 2004), the electric field in the waveguide mode is inverse
proportional to the group velocity and the waveguide modes that corre-
spond to lower group velocity, in turn, induce stronger nonlinear effects
(e.g. larger red-shift). In Fig. 4, we present the group velocities calculated
by numerical differentiation of the frequency manifolds ω(k). The dash line
represents the group velocity dispersion of the defect modes of the line-
defect waveguide. The group velocity dispersion of the coupled-cavity wave-
guide is marked by the solid line. The result obtained demonstrates that the
group velocities of both defect modes increase as the value of the wave vec-
tor increases. On the contrary, the red-shift decreases as the wave vector
increases. It confirms the above stated.
Second, we can see that with the coupled-cavity waveguide one can
achieve group velocities less that 0.1c (c denotes the light velocity), and
thus a large decrease in the operating power. One can also use similar
structures whose mode dispersion is specially engineered and achieve ultra
small values of the group velocity (Mookherjea 2002; Altug and Vuĉković
2004). Such structures are widely used in a variety of devices ranging from
optical delay components to low-threshold lasers. While developing such
devices, specific attention should be paid to the estimation of the intensity
enhancement in the coupled-cavity waveguides. The intensity inside them
is higher than that of the input pulse because the reduction of the group
velocity results in the spatial compression of the pulse inside the cavities.
In fact, the incident intensity applied to a coupled-cavity waveguide can be
written as (Yariv and Yeh 1984)
158 I.S. MAKSYMOV ET AL.
Fig. 4. Group velocity dispersion of the defect modes of the line-defect (dash line) and coupled-cavity
(solid line) waveguides.
2
I = 21 εeff ε0 vgr EC , (12)
2
where EC is the modulus square of the electric field inside the cavities
and εeff is the effective dielectric constant, which is a function of the both
the angular frequency and the intensity. Using Equation (10) we obtain that
the intensity inside the cavities is related to the incident intensity as
IC = I · S, (13)
4. Conclusions
Acknowledgements
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