Abstract
Photonic crystals offer considerable promise as means of achieving ultra-compact photonic circuitry. It can be shown that most of the devices common in ordinary planar waveguide circuitry, such as splitters, MMIs and couplers, can be reproduced using photonic crystals, often on a reduced spatial scale. However, the first issue that must be resolved before these devices are taken seriously concerns the propagation loss of simple straight waveguides. These waveguides are commonly fabricated by etching a lattice of holes into a slab waveguide structure with the modification (or emission) of one or more rows of holes to form a so-called defect waveguide. So far, these waveguides have indeed been shown to guide light. However, detailed measurements of their propagation losses are rare, and when they have been reported indicate losses in the 50-100 cm-1 range[1]. These values are unacceptably high for many applications, and the origin of this loss is still not well understood beyond the obvious explanation involving coupling to radiation modes. A better understanding of this loss mechanism is necessary in order to design lower-loss structures, including the devices listed above as well as low-threshold electrically-pumped in-plane lasers.
© 2003 Optical Society of America
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