Slow light waveguides based on bound states in the continuum.

Abstract

The concept of bound states in the continuum (BIC) has been advancing light confinement technology in leaky environments. In this Letter, we propose and numerically demonstrate a slow light waveguide based on a BIC mode. We considered a waveguide with a polymer core loaded on a plane slab, which supports a leaky guided mode coupled to the radiation continuum in the slab. We found that periodic modulation of the polymer core along the propagation direction can result in a high group index mode with a low propagation loss due to BIC confinement. The introduction of one-dimensional photonic crystals into the BIC waveguides will largely expand its functionality and applications in integrated photonics.