Photonics and Nanostructures Fundamentals and Applications 2 (2004) 199206 www.elsevier.

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Investigation of ring resonators in photonic crystal circuits

V. Dinesh Kumar, T. Srinivas, A. Selvarajan
Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India Received 15 November 2004; accepted 22 November 2004 Available online 2 December 2004

Abstract In this paper, we propose the implementation of waveguide-coupled ring resonators in photonic crystal integrated circuits. Using two-dimensional nite difference time domain (2D FDTD) method, we study the spectral characteristics of a waveguidecoupled ring carved in two-dimensional photonic crystal of square lattice (2D SLPC) and based on the results, we suitably modify the structure geometry to establish its performance as a ring resonator. We further investigate the effects of ring dimension and crystal parameters on the resonance properties of the ring resonator. # 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.
Keywords: Photonic crystal; Ring resonator; Free spectral range; Resonant wavelength; Finite difference time domain method

1. Introduction Waveguide-coupled ring resonators are extremely useful components for ltering, routing, switching, modulation, and multiplexing/demutliplexing tasks in photonic integrated circuits (PICs) [1]. It consists of a ring resonator evanescently coupled to a pair of waveguides such that power in one waveguide is transferred to the other through the resonance of the ring. The spectral characteristics of integrated opticsbased waveguide-coupled ring resonators (IORR) have already been studied [24] and found suitable for application as add/drop lter in WDM system [5].
Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 80 22932852; fax: +91 80 23600563. E-mail address: dineshkumar@protocol.ece.iisc.ernet.in (A. Selvarajan).

However, to our knowledge, the performance of waveguide-coupled ring resonators in photonic crystal has not been studied so far. Photonic crystals provide a promising platform for future miniaturized integrated optical circuits which will address many issues related to high-speed optical communication systems [69]. Since ring resonators are one of the most useful components in a PIC, it is necessary to examine their resonance behavior in photonic crystal circuits. In this paper, we propose the implementation of waveguidecoupled ring resonators in photonic crystal circuits and discuss the considerations regarding their design. Using nite difference time domain (FDTD) method, we examine the resonance properties of a waveguidecoupled ring in two-dimensional photonic crystal of square lattice (2D SLPC) and based on the results, we modify the structure to improve its resonance performance. We also investigate the effect of ring

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size and crystal parameters on the resonant wavelength of the photonic crystal-based ring resonator (PCRR).

n1=2 n1=2 Ezi1=2;j1=2 Ezi1=2;j1=2

Dt ei1=2;j1=2
n n Hxi1=2;j1 Hxi1=2;j

n n Hyi;j1=2 Hyi1;j1=2

Dx 2. Ring resonator in photonic crystal 2.1. Basic structure The ring carved in a photonic crystal (PC) cannot be of arbitrary shape but its geometry will be dictated by lattice structure of the crystal. In a PC of square lattice, rings of rectangular shape can be introduced, whereas a PC of hexagonal lattice would permit rings of hexagonal shape. We implement a waveguidecoupled ring resonator in a 2D SLPC consisting of an array of 30 24 of dielectric rods with following parameters: a 0:58 mm (lattice constant), ra 0:18a mm (radius of rods), na 3:4 (refractive index of rods), nb 1 (background index). We create a rectangular ring in the crystal by deleting 2(12 + 14) rods from their respective locations as shown in Fig. 1(a). By deleting one line of rods, a channel waveguide is created at one line separation from the ring. The analogy of the structure with IORR indicates that the PC ring would behave like a resonator whose resonant wavelengths would depend upon its geometry (shape and size). However, besides the ring geometry, the resonance features of the ring would be governed by crystal parameters determining the photonic bandgap (index contrast, lling ratio, etc.). The bandgap of the crystal would restrict the spectral range of resonance of the ring, due to the reason that any resonance mode falling outside the bandgap would couple to the bulk crystal. In that case, the ring will behave no longer as a resonator, since it cannot store electromagnetic energy. We analyze the spectral characteristics of the waveguide-coupled ring carved in the 2D SLPC using FDTD method. 2.2. Computational method We use 2D FDTD method [10,11] to analyze the spectral characteristics of the waveguide-coupled ring implemented in the 2D SLPC. We discretize the real space on a grid lattice of cell size D 0:035 mm and solve discrete form of Maxwells curl Eqs. (1)(3) for TM polarization
n1 n Hxi1=2;j1 Hxi1=2;j1

Dy (1) !

Dt m0

n1=2 Ezi1=2;j3=2

n1=2 Ezi1=2;j1=2

Dy (2) !

n1 n Hyi;j1=2 Hyi;j1=2

Dt Ezi1=2;j1=2 Ezi1=2;j1=2 m0 Dx

n1=2

n1=2

(3) where represents z-component of electric eld at point i 1=2; j 1=2 of the grid lattice at nth time step and so on. The input of the waveguide is excited with an electric source S placed at distance Ds 2a from it, which produces a Gaussian pulse modulating a sinusoidal carrier at center wavelength l 1:55 mm with polarization parallel to dielectric rods, which is the case of TM mode of propagation in the crystal. The electric and magnetic elds are updated in every points of the grid lattice in nite time steps of Dt. For stable condition of Yee algorithm, the p time step should be less than D= 2c 2:474 1017 s. In the present computation, we use time step Dt 2:47 1017 s. To terminate the computational domain, uniaxial perfectly matched layer (UPML) boundary conditions [10,12] are applied so that reections will be minimal. To calculate the transmission response of the structure, a line detector D is placed at distance Dd a from the output port of the waveguide. The components of the Poynting vectors (for the Fourier transformed elds) perpendicular to the detectors are averaged over the detectors and are normalized with respect to the one when the detector is positioned close to the source in absence of the structure. This gives the spectral response of the waveguide-coupled ring in the 2D SLPC. 2.3. Spectral characteristics of basic structure We compute the transmission spectrum of the waveguide-coupled ring (PCRR1) using FDTD method described earlier. The transmission spectrum
n1=2 Ezi1=2;j1=2

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Fig. 1. Various congurations of channel waveguide-coupled ring of dimension 11a 15a created in 2D SLPC. (a) PCRR1: sharp ring corners and long interaction length. (b) PCRR2: smooth ring corners and long interaction length. (c) PCRR3: sharp ring corners and short interaction length. (d) PCRR4: smooth ring corners and short interaction length.

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Fig. 2. Transmission spectra of various congurations. (a) PCRR1: transmission spectrum shows uctuations, dips are non-periodic and less pronounced. (b) PCRR2: uctuations have reduced but dips are non-periodic. (c) PCRR3: dips are not sharp but periodic. (d) PCRR4: comparatively sharp and periodic dips.

of the waveguide with and without ring are shown in Fig. 2(a). In absence of the ring, the waveguide has uniform transmission in the range l 1:271:84 mm within the bandgap of the crystal. In the presence of the ring, the transmission spectrum, however, contains dips and uctuations. This is due to coupling of waveguide power to the ring at specic wavelengths. In this case, there could be two possible ways of power transfer from the waveguide to the ring. (1) Waveguide coupling: when two identical waveguides are in close vicinity there would be periodic exchange of power between them. (2) Resonance coupling: the evanescent eld across the waveguide wall could excite the resonance mode of the ring thus causing power coupling from the propagating mode of the waveguide to the resonant mode of the ring. In resonance coupling, the dips in the transmission spectrum of the structure PCRR1 should be periodic, i.e. the separa-

tion between two consecutive resonant modes called free spectral range (FSR) must be constant. The FSR of a ring resonator is given by FSR nn1 nn c ne L (4)

where nn and nn1 are the frequencies of two consecutive resonant modes, ne is effective refractive index and L is mean circumference of the ring. This indicates that FSR is constant and is inversely proportional to the ring circumference. In the present case, the dips in the transmission spectrum of the waveguide-coupled ring are non-periodic and less pronounced which imply that the structure PCRR1 does not behave like a resonator. This could be due to: (1) the waveguide coupling effect between the waveguide and the ring arm which changes the resonant mode eld of the ring and (2) sharp corners of the

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ring which cause back-reection into a counter-propagating mode that splits the resonance peaks. 2.4. Modied structures In order to improve the resonance behavior of the waveguide-coupled ring, we consider the following three modied cases of the structures. Case I. To minimize the effect of counterpropagating mode resulting from back-reections at the sharp corners of the ring, we add one extra rod at each corner at half lattice constant as shown in Fig. 1(b). The additional rod at each corner acts like a rightangled reector reducing the back-reection at the corresponding corner. The transmission spectrum of this structure (PCRR2) is shown in Fig. 2(b). It is observed that the corner smoothing has minimized the uctuations in the transmission spectrum though the dips are still non-periodic. Since the periodicity of the dips is an important feature of resonance, the structure PCRR2 too does not behave as a resonator. Case II. We reduce the interaction length between the waveguide and the ring to minimize the effect of waveguide coupling. To do so, we modify the waveguide structure as shown in Fig. 1(c). The waveguide used has four 90 bends such that it interacts with the ring over a short length (three lattice constant Li 3a). The bends of the waveguide are smoothened by adding one extra element at each corner at half lattice constant, so that its transmission be uniform within the pass band. The corners of the ring are sharp. The transmission spectrum at the output of the waveguide with and without ring are shown in Fig. 2(c). It shows signicant improvement in the resonance property of structure PCRR3. Now the dips are periodic which establishes the resonance behavior of the PCRR. The spectral characteristics of the resonator, however, is contaminated with uctuations which could possibly be due to sharp corners of the ring. Case III. We combine the features of the above two cases in structure PCRR4 shown in Fig. 1(d). Its computed transmission spectrum is shown in Fig. 2(d). The spectrum shows periodic and comparatively sharp dips which justies the resonance behavior of PCRR4. From the above study, we conclude that: (1) short interaction length (for minimization of waveguide coupling effect) between the waveguide and the ring is

necessary for its resonance behavior and (2) corner smoothening of the ring is important to suppress the back-reections causing uctuations in the spectral characteristics. Hence, the consideration of these two factors is important from design point of view of a PCRR. Out of four congurations of waveguide-coupled rings discussed earlier, the last one (PCRR4) shown in Fig. 2(d) is the most appropriate geometry for a waveguide-coupled photonic crystal ring resonator. We study its resonance property further. The resonance data of structure PCRR4 is listed in Table 1. It is observed that the dips are almost periodic and the wavelength separation between two consecutive dips is approximately 4.7 THz. The small variation in the spacings between dips could be due to computational error. The grid size used in the FDTD computation is D 0:035 mm, whereas the radii of the rods is ra 0:1044 mm. Thus, there are approximately six grid points per diameter of the rod. It is expected that with the use of ne grids (half the present size), the computed value of FSR would be constant. We plot the spatial distribution of electric eld Ez at two different wavelengths, l 1:65 mm which is the resonant wavelength of PCRR4 and l 1:6 mm which is off-resonance. These are shown in Fig. 3(a) and (b), respectively. As expected, at resonant wavelength l 1:65 mm, the eld of the waveguide fully couples to the ring, whereas at offresonance it does not couple and continues to propagate through the waveguide. This indicates that resonance behavior of PCRR4 like is that of IORR. We create another waveguide symmetrically opposite the rst one as shown in Fig. 4(a). This time we compute the transmission spectra at the right port of rst and the left port of the second waveguides. These are plotted in Fig. 4(b). It is seen that the transmission spectrum at
Table 1 Resonance data for PCRR of dimension 11a 15a n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 nn (THz) 176.26 180.94 184.96 189.63 194.33 199.67 205.03 Dips (dB) 11.1 12.8 18.6 12.6 15.7 10.7 14.1 ln (mm) 1.70 1.65 1.62 1.58 1.54 1.50 1.46 FSR (THz) 4.68 4.02 4.68 4.69 5.34 5.36

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Fig. 3. Spatial plot of electric eld Ez at: (a) resonant wavelength l 1:65 mm; (b) off-resonance l 1:6 mm.

Fig. 4. (a) PCRR of dimension 11a 15a with two coupled waveguides W1 and W2 . (b) The dips in output spectrum of waveguide W1 are at the positions of peaks at the left port of second waveguide W2 .

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the output of the second waveguide consists of periodic peaks occurring at the positions of the dips in the transmission spectrum of the rst waveguide. This is due to switching of power from rst waveguide to the second through the PC ring at resonance.

decrease in index contrast of the crystal cause corresponding increase or decrease in FSR of PCRR. 3.3. Effect of lling ratio We compute the resonant wavelengths of PCRR of dimension 11a 15a in the 2D SLPC for two different values of radii r1 0:9ra and r2 0:95ra of dielectric rods. It is observed that a typical decrease of 5% in radius of the rods increases FSR approximately by 2.5%. For application in DWDM systems for resolving closely spaced channels, the sharpness of resonance of the ring resonators must be enhanced. One simple way to achieve this is to use higher-order congurations [4] which is a topic of further investigation. 4. Conclusion In this paper, the implementation of waveguidecoupled ring resonators in photonic crystal has been proposed. The spectral characteristics of waveguidecoupled ring resonator has been analyzed and the consideration regarding their design have been discussed. It is found that waveguide-coupled ring in a photonic crystal behaves like resonator when the effect of waveguide coupling between the waveguide and the ring arm is reduced. The corners of the ring must be smoothened by adding extra elements to suppress the counter propagating modes causing spurious dips in the transmission spectrum. The effect of ring dimension and crystal parameters on the resonance behavior of the ring resonator have been investigated. References
[1] K. Oda, N. Takato, H. Toba, J. Lightwave Technol. 9 (1991) 728736. [2] B.E. Little, J.S. Foresi, G. Steinmeyer, E.R. Thoen, S.T. Chu, H.A. Haus, E.P. Ippen, L.C. Kimerling, W. Greene, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett. 10 (1998) 549551. [3] B.E. Little, S.T. Chu, H.A. Haus, J. Foresi, J.-P. Laine, J. Lightwave Technol. 15 (1997) 9981005. [4] S.T. Chu, B.E. Little, W. Pan, T. Kaneko, Y. Kokubun, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett. 11 (1999) 14261428. [5] B.E. Little, H.A. Haus, J.S. Foresi, L.C. Kimerling, E.P. Ippen, D.J. Ripin, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett. 10 (1998) 816818. [6] T.F. Krauss, R.M. De La Rue, Prog. Quantum Electron. (1999) 5196.

3. Parameters affecting resonant frequency 3.1. Effect of ring size To study the effect of ring size on the resonance, we consider a PC ring created by removing 2(10 + 12) rods, with one coupled waveguide and compute the transmission spectrum at its output port using FDTD method. The structure is similar to PCRR4 studied in Section 2.4, except that the dimension of the ring is 11a 11a. From the transmission spectrum shown in Fig. 5, it is observed that the FSR has increased to 5.5 THz. This is in agreement with Eq. (4) which states that the FSR of a ring is inversely proportional to its circumference. 3.2. Effect of index contrast To examine the effect of index contrast of crystals on resonance properties, we nd spectral characteristics of PCRR of dimension 11a 15a in the 2D SLPC for two different values of refractive indices n1 0:95na and n2 1:05na of dielectric rods. We calculate the shift in resonant wavelengths from the normal value. It is observed that an increase or

Fig. 5. Transmission spectrum of PCRR with ring dimension 11a 11a.

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V.D. Kumar et al. / Photonics and Nanostructures Fundamentals and Applications 2 (2004) 199206 [10] A. Taov, S.C. Haghness, Computational Electrodynamics: The Finite Difference Time Domain Method, Norwood, MA, 2000. [11] S.T. Chu, S.K. Chaudhuri, J. Lightwave Technol. 7 (1989) 20332038. [12] J.P. Berneger, J. Comput. Phys. 114 (1994) 185200.

[7] J.D. Joannopoulos, R.D. Meade, J.N. Winn, Molding the Flow of Light, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1995. [8] S. Noda, Teaching light new tricks, SPIE Mag. (2001) 2831. [9] S. Fan, A. Mekis, S.G. Johnson, J.D. Joannopoulos, Manipulating light with photonic crystals, in: M. Bertolotti, et al. (Eds.), Nanoscale Linear and Nonlinear Optics, vol. 560, 2001