A proposal for enhancing four-wave mixing in slow light engineered photonic crystal waveguides and its application to optical regeneration

In this paper, we investigate both analytically and numerically four-wave mixing (FWM) in short (80 mu m) dispersion engineered slow light photonic crystal waveguides. We demonstrate that both a larger FWM conversion efficiency and an increased FWM bandwidth (similar to 10nm) can be achieved in these waveguides as compared to dispersive PhC waveguides. This improvement is achieved through the net slow light enhancement of the FWM efficiency (almost 30dB as compared to a fast nanowire of similar length), even in the presence of slow light increased linear and nonlinear losses, and the suitable dispersion profile of these waveguides. We show how such improved FWM operation can be advantageously exploited for designing a compact 2R and 3R regenerator with the appropriate nonlinear power transfer function. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America