Three dimensional (3D) optical information processing

Light exhibits dramatically different properties when it propagates in or interacts with 3D structured media. Comparing to 2D optical elements where the light interacts with a sequence of surfaces separated by free space, 3D optical elements provides more degrees of freedom to perform imaging and optical information processing functions. With sufficient dielectric contrast, a periodically structured medium may be capable of forbidding propagation of light in certain frequency range, called band gap; the medium is then called a photonic crystal. Various "defects", i.e. deviations from perfect periodicity, in photonic crystals are designed and widely used as waveguides and microcavities in integrated optical circuits without appreciable loss. However, many of the proposed waveguide structures suffer from large group velocity dispersion (GVD) and exhibit relatively small guiding bandwidth because of the distributed Bragg reflection (DBR) along the guiding direction. As optical communications and optical computing progress, more challenging demands have also been proposed, such as tunable guiding bandwidth, dramatically slowing down group velocity and active control of group velocity. We propose and analyze shear discontinuities as a new type of defect in photonic crystals.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Tian, Kehan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• George Barbastathis.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/35627

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/35627