Storing light in active optical waveguides with single-negative materials

摘要

We show that a nonresonant planar waveguide consisting of conventional dielectric cladded withnsingle-negative materials supports degenerate propagating modes for which the group velocity andntotal energy flow can be zero if the media are lossless. Absorptive losses will destroy the zero-groupnvelocity condition for real frequency/complex wave vector modes. We show that by incorporatingngain G into the core dielectric, there exists a critical gain value Gc at which we can recover thencondition of zero group velocity, so that light pulses can be stopped and stored. This structure isnsimpler to achieve than double-negative metamaterials, has small footprint, and can be incorporatedninto ultracompact on-chip optoelectronics. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.nu0004doi:10.1063/1.3431574