A new approach to low loss photonic crystal waveguides

Photonic crystal waveguides allow ultra-compact realization of integrated optical components because they have high group index. However, they also induce significant losses in effect reducing the scope of their applications. We find that by increasing the photonic crystal hole to pitch ratio r/Λ to 0.388 a low loss transmission band is created below the traditional photonic crystal guiding band. Furthermore this low loss band has sharply defined cutoffs transmission edges for devices with a length of 50 μm or longer. Finite difference time domain and plane wave expansion simulations confirm the results and show that the sharpness of the cutoffs can be explained by the spectral shape of the guiding mode in the band diagram.