Stopping and time reversing light in a waveguide with an all-optical system
AssigneeThe Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
InventorsMehmet Fatih Yanik, Wonjoo Suh, Zhang Wang, Shanhui Fan
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Abstract
We introduce a new all-optical mechanism that can compress the bandwidth of light pulses to absolute zero, and bring them to a complete stop. The mechanism can be realized in a system consisting of a waveguide side-coupled to tunable resonators, which generates a photonic band structure that represents a classical analogue of the Electromagnetically Induced Transparency. The same system can also achieve a time-reversal operation. We demonstrate the operation of such a system by finite-difference time-domain simulations of an implementation in photonic crystals.
Claims19
A system for affecting a wave pulse of a type, said pulse having frequency components, comprising:
- a medium having a bandwidth that can initially accommodate the frequency components of the wave pulse at a group velocity, said medium comprising a waveguide and a first and a second linear sequence of resonators, each sequence side coupled to the waveguide;
- and
- a device causing frequencies of the frequency components of the pulse to be altered after the pulse has entered the medium so that information in the pulse is substantially preserved, wherein the pulse is of said type before and after the alteration, so that the spectrum of the pulse is modulated.
A method for affecting a wave pulse of a type, said pulse having frequency components, comprising:
- providing a medium having a bandwidth that can initially accommodate the frequency components of the wave pulse at a group velocity, said medium comprising a waveguide and a first and a second linear sequence of resonators, each sequence side coupled to the waveguide;
- and
- causing frequencies of the frequency components of the pulse to be altered by acting on the resonators after the pulse has entered the medium so that information in the pulse is substantially preserved, wherein the pulse is of said type before and after the alteration, and the group velocity of the pulse is altered by the compression.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.