Slow Wave Phenomena in Photonic Crystals

TL;DR

This paper explores the frozen mode regime in photonic crystals, a novel slow wave phenomenon where incident light is fully converted into a slow mode with diverging amplitude, offering robustness over traditional resonances.

Contribution

It introduces the frozen mode regime as a new wave phenomenon in photonic crystals, distinct from known resonances, with enhanced robustness and potential applications.

Findings

Frozen mode regime enables complete conversion of incident light into slow modes.

The regime exhibits diverging amplitude and high robustness to imperfections.

It is less sensitive to crystal size and shape compared to traditional resonances.

Abstract

Slow light in photonic crystals and other periodic structures is associated with stationary points of the photonic dispersion relation, where the group velocity of light vanishes. We show that in certain cases, the vanishing group velocity is accompanied by the so-called frozen mode regime, when the incident light can be completely converted into the slow mode with huge diverging amplitude. The frozen mode regime is a qualitatively new wave phenomenon -- it does not reduce to any known electromagnetic resonance. Formally, the frozen mode regime is not a resonance, in a sense that it is not particularly sensitive to the size and shape of the photonic crystal. The frozen mode regime is more robust and powerful, compared to any known slow-wave resonance. It has much higher tolerance to absorption and structural imperfections.