Bloch cavity solitons in an all-photonic crystal Fabry-Pérot cavity

Abstract

The growing interest in photonic crystals (PhCs) over the last years has led also to nonlinear applications, both with second-order and third-order nonlinearities. In PhCs the properties of light propagation can be tailored to a much wider extent than in homogeneous dielectrics. Recently an all-photonic crystal Fabry-Perot resonator was proposed, where the cavity and mirrors both comprise PhCs [1] (see structure shown in Fig. 1(a)). Because the interior PhC is operating in the subdiffractive regime, angle-independent linear transmission [1] and bistability were obtained [2]. Recently, in the case of a weak 2D periodic dielectric modulation, the peculiar properties of such a nonlinear resonator were used to obtain Bloch cavity solitons with novel properties [3]. Cavity solitons as self-localized nonlinear structures can be used as optical memory cells in future devices [4].