Deepening of photonic crystal engineering and its application

本研究计划的目的是探索新的学术前沿，我们称之为光子晶体工程，并利用所获得的概念开发各种器件应用。以下是本项目的主要成果。高Q纳米空腔；我们已经开发出一种三波长大小的纳米腔，其Q因子为250万。这个Q因子是我们开始项目时初始值的1000多倍。纳米腔以其优异的性能令全世界的研究人员惊叹不已，现在被称为野田腔，应用于各个领域。这两篇描述纳米空腔的论文被Thomson ISI评为科学与材料领域引用率最高的文章之一。并且，这两篇论文中有一篇入选《自然材料》创刊5周年十大最佳论文之一。平面内异质结构：本课题提出的平面内异质结构概念使光子晶体器件在保持线与点缺陷之间最佳耦合的同时，可以实现多波长、多长度的工作。这一概念构成了纳米光子器件设计的一项基本技术，对世界范围内这一领域的研究者产生了重大影响。此外，源于这一概念的各种技术现在被广泛用于制造高性能光子元件。动态控制：目前对光子晶体的研究主要集中在静态特性方面。特别重要的是，本课题提出并论证了光子晶体特性动态控制的概念。这一概念对于未来的光操纵技术，如光停止、光量子信息技术等，将是不可避免的。这一结果发表在《自然材料》杂志的新闻与观点版块。器件应用：首次开发了新型的基于光子晶体的可处理16个波长通道的加丢器件和面内通道的加丢器件。此外，还提出了平顶响应和无极化操作的方法，并进行了验证。总之，我们取得了许多世界领先的成果，深化了光子晶体工程。其中一项研究结果发表在《科学》杂志上，另一项发表在《自然》杂志上，另外两项发表在《自然材料》杂志上，另一项发表在《自然光子学》杂志上。这些结果不仅在日本国内，而且在世界范围内引起了广泛的关注。少

The purpose of this research project is to explore the new academic frontier which we call Photonic Crystal Engineering and to develop various device applications using the obtained concepts. The followings are the main results of this project.I. High Q nanocavities ; We have developed a cubic-wavelength-size nanocavity with a Q factor of 2.5 million. This Q factor is more than 1000 times the initial value at the point when we started the project. The nanocavity amazed all the researchers around the world due to its high performance, and is now called as Noda's cavity to be utilized in various areas. The two papers describing the nanocavities were awarded from Thomson ISI as one of the highest citation ratio articles in science and material area. Moreover, one of the two papers is selected as one of the 10 best papers when Nature Materials celebrated the 5 years anniversary.II. In-plane heterostructure : The concept of in-plane heterostructure proposed in this project enables multi-wav … More elength operation of photonic crystal devices while maintaining the best coupling between line and point defects. This concept constitutes a fundamental technique for the design of nano-photonic devices and has great impact on all the researchers in this area around the world. Moreover, a variety of techniques stemmed from this concept are now widely utilized to create high performance photonic components.III. Dynamic control : So far, researches on photonic crystals were mainly focused on the static characteristics. It is especially important that the concept of dynamic control of the characteristic of photonic crystals was proposed and demonstrated in this project. This concept will be inevitable for the future photon manipulation technologies such as stopping of light, optical quantum information technologies, and etc. The result was written up by Nature Materials in the section of News & Views.IV. Device applications : Novel photonic crystal based add-drop devices that can process 16 wavelength channels and in-plane channel add-drop devices have been developed for the first time. Furthermore, the methods to obtain a flat-top response and a polarization free operation have been proposed and demonstrated.To summarize, we have succeeded in achieving various world leading results and deepening the Photonic Crystal Engineering. One of these results was published in Science, another in Nature, the other two in Nature Materials and another in Nature Photonics. These results were attracted much attention not only within Japan, but also around the world. Less