Femtosecond measurements of the time of flight of photons in a three-dimensional photonic crystal

Abstract

We report on experimental measurements of the propagation behavior of short optical pulses in a three-dimensional photonic crystal in the visible spectrum. The propagation delay of 70 fs light pulses transmitted through a sample of a fcc synthetic opal at frequencies lying in a photonic stop band was measured directly using a time-of-flight technique. Taking into account spectral reshaping of the transmitted pulses as well as the residual frequency chirp of the incoming pulses, it is found that the pulses significantly slow down at the photonic band edges.

Large Dispersive Effects near the Band Edges of Photonic Crystals

“…In one-dimensional (1D) multilayer systems, pulsed-laser experiments have demonstrated extremely short tunneling times at in-gap frequencies [11,12], as well as very low group velocities at near-gap frequencies [13]. Pulse slowing was also seen in a synthetic opal [14]. For three-dimensional crystals, fascinating predictions have been made of dynamical effects such as localized photon states [3] and nonlinear interactions leading to optical bistability [6], gap solitons [15], and optical limiting and switching [16].…”

Diffractive Geometric Optics for Bloch Wave Packets

“…Since for ℓ ∼ ε the dispersion relation can have form entirely different from the original equations, this leaves open the door for materials with radically different properties than the periodic constituents. Among goals achieved by such efforts is to slow light ( [21], [5], [36], [20], [3]), and to achieve preassigned band gap structures. The use of the latter materials in optimized fibers is now common practice (see [30]).…”

Distortion management in slow-light pulse delay

“…Over the last decade, there has been great progress in devising new methods for tailoring the dispersion of optical materials, such as electromagnetically induced transparency [1], photonic crystals [2], and nano-optic resonators [3][4][5]. This work has been motivated by the need for electronically or optically controllable pulse delays for applications such as optical buffers, data synchronization, optical memories, and signal processing.…”

“…A more practical approach to distortion management is to measure distortion as the deviation of the medium from the ideal one described in Eq. (2). At this point, it becomes convenient to describe the medium in terms of its transfer function H(ω), which is easily related to k(ω) by H(ω) = exp(ik(ω)z).…”