Slow light in photonic crystals waveguide constructed with symmetrically perturbed structure

Symmetrically perturbed photonic crystal waveguide can be constructed by inserting perturbative dielectric rods into photonic crystal waveguide structure with whose rods’ radius distributed according to a certain proportion. Slow light properties in this new structure are studied by using the plane wave expansion method (PWM). In this paper, schemes of adjusting radius of perturbative dielectric rods and adjusting the dielectric constant of perturbative dielectric rods are proposed to optimize slow light properties. The result shows that the scheme for adjusting radius of perturbative rods can realize larger average slow light bandwidth and efficiently control the NDBP value of the waveguide, but it contributes little to obtain smaller group velocity. The scheme for adjusting dielectric constant of perturbative rods can realize smaller group velocity, but can only obtain smaller slow light bandwidth and cannot efficiently enlarge NDBP value of waveguide. Both optimization schemes proposed in this paper realize group velocity that is two magnitudes smaller than the vacuum speed of light meanwhile maintaining large NDBP and low GVD region. Our results provide important theoretical basis for the potential application offered by symmetrically perturbed photonic crystal in future optical networks.