Slow light in a dielectric waveguide with negative-refractive-index photonic crystal cladding

A slow light waveguide made of a dielectric slab inserted in a two-dimensional photonic crystal with a negative effective refractive index is proposed and numerically studied. The waveguide may possess modes with zero group velocity, and its frequency varies with the thickness of the waveguide. A linearly tapered left-handed photonic crystal waveguide is also proposed and studied. It is shown that the so-called 'trapped rainbow' proposed by Tsakmakidis, Boardman, and Hess [1] is difficult to realize due to a coupling of forward- and backward-propagating modes near zero group velocity. However, different frequency components of a broadband excitation can still be separated through partial accumulation at waveguide sections of different thicknesses. (C) 2008 Optical Society of America.