Electro-optical modulation in two-dimensional photonic crystal linear waveguides

The electro-optical modulation in a two-dimensional photonic crystal linear waveguide is presented. In order to create a linear waveguide, the radius of a line of rods is reduced. The linear waveguide composed of a dielectric cylinder in air is studied by solving Maxwell's equations using the plane wave expansion method and the finite-difference time-domain method. The switching mechanism is a change in the conductance in the waveguide region and hence modulating the guided modes and eventually switching is achieved. Such a mechanism of modulation should open up a new application for designing tunable components in photonic integrated circuits. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.