Increasing the bandwidth of slow light in fishbone-like grating waveguides

Abstract

Slow light, a technology to control the optical signal by reducing the group velocity, has been widely studied to obtain enhanced nonlinearities and increased phase shifts owing to its promoting of the light–matter interaction ability. In this work, a wideband slow light is achieved in a simple one-dimensional fishbone grating waveguide. A flat band indicating slow light with a group index of 13 and bandwidth over 10 nm is obtained by the plane wave expansion calculation, and the corresponding experimental results agree well with the theoretical prediction. A step taper is designed to compensate the coupling loss. The proposed fishbone grating waveguide is a good candidate for wideband slow light devices in light communication.