Understanding Disorder in Rectangular Dielectric Microcavity CROWs (Project Report 0642603-Y2)
This NSF-funded project [0642603] is a five-year (60 months) CAREER (Faculty Early Career Development Program) unified research and education development program, which focused on the physics and applications of optical waveguiding in the CROW (Coupled Resonator Optical Waveguide) structure. The CROW structure is suitable as the foundation of this project because it offers a very high four-wave mixing (FWM) nonlinearity based on the slow-light effects on each of the pump, signal and idler modes. The triple resonance effects can result in a large improvement of the nonlinear coefficient even with a modest improvement of the slowing factor. However, understanding the effects of disorder in CROWs is important, since it can limit the amount of slowing that can be achieved, and hence, the enhancement of slow-light enhanced nonlinearity.