Electrooptically tunable photonic crystal

Abstract

We report on electrooptical modulation with a sub 1Volt sensititivity in a photonic crystal slab waveguide resonator which contains a nanostructured nonlinear optical polymer. The electrooptical susceptibility in the core was induced by high-electric-field poling. A square lattice of holes carrying a linear defect was transferred into the slab, creating a photonic crystal slab based resonator. Applying an external electric modulation voltage to electrodes placed underneath and on top of the assembly leads to a modulation of the transmission at a fixed wavelength. This modulation effect is based on the electronic displacement polarization in a noncentrosymmetric medium (Pockels-effect) and is therefore inherently by more than three orders of magnitude faster than any other reported electrooptic modulation effect in nanophotonics.