Career: Photonic Crystal Waveguides and Device Integration

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This is a proposal to design, build, and evaluate photonic crystal nanophotonicwaveguide components and optical systems. The broad goals of this program are todevelop a practical nanophotonic technology, and to incorporate knowledge of theadvancements in photonics technology into the classroom. There has been a great deal ofresearch into photonic bandgap structures in the last few years. All of this work,however, has been done either as basic research on the optical properties of differentdielectric lattices or on single photonic components. My research at USC containsseveral programs in which the goals are to develop individual nanophotonic devices or toengineer a particular feature of one of these devices. This proposal is intended to buildon work ongoing in those programs and to integrate the results into an integrated opticalcommunication technology. Waveguides, of course, are important in their own right, butthey are also one of the key elements necessary to combine devices to form functionaloptical circuits. In doing this, care must be taken to minimize coupling and insertionlosses as well. There are several key questions to be investigated in this program. Whatis the origin of photonic crystal waveguide loss? How do we design efficient guiding inthin patterned films? What are the trade-offs between one-dimensional and two-dimensionalperiodic guiding structures? How do we go from single devices to an integrated optics technology using photonic crystals? What modeling algorithms can handle these structures efficiently, and are there system level modeling algorithms possible?