Modeling of photonic crystal waveguide structures

Abstract

Photonic crystal (PhC) structures and photonic structures based on them represent nowadays very promising structures of artificial origin. Since they exhibit very specific properties and characteristics that can be very difficult (or even impossible) to realize by other means, they represent a significant part of new artificially made metamaterial classes. For studying and modeling properties of PhC structures, we have applied, implemented and partially improved various complementary techniques: the 2D plane wave expansion (PWE) method, and the 2D finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method with perfectly matched layers. Also, together with these in-house methods, other tools available in the field have been applied, including, e.g. MIT MPB (PWE), F2P (FDTD) and CAMFR (bidirectional expansion and propagation mode matching method) packages. We have applied these methods to several PhC waveguide structure examples, studying the effects of varying the key parameters and geometry. Such a study is relevant for proper understanding of physical mechanisms and for optimization and fabrication recommendations. Namely, in this contribution, we have concentrated on several examples of PhC waveguide structure simulations, of two types of guides (dielectric-rode type and air-hole type), with several geometries: rectangular lattice with either rectangular or chessboard inclusions. The modeling results are compared and discussed.