ABSTRACT
Slotted photonic crystal waveguide (SPCW) is a unique waveguide geometry in integrated photonics platform that simultaneously provides tight spatial as well as temporal mode-field and, thereby, offers ultra-high optical confinement. This facilitates the technologists to deliver compact solutions to realize light–matter interactions, for applications ranging from sensing; electro-optic modulation; and nonlinear optics to quantum optics, with an unprecedented miniaturization of underlying physical footprint and operating power. This chapter highlights some of the recent theoretical developments of active all-optical devices based on enhanced light–matter interactions inside SPCWs, especially focusing on the stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) interaction. The SRS has been adopted here as the key nonlinear optical phenomenon as it has shown potentialities to alleviate some important active optical functionalities in photonics. However, the potentialities of SRS in silicon photonics have actually been hindered over the years by the requirement of larger effective length of waveguide and threshold power as compared to the need in photonic integrated circuits (PICs). The chapter shows that the hindrance can effectively be exterminated drastically by enhancing the high SRS gain of materials like silicon nanocrystals through utilizing the ultra-high optical confinement in SPCWs. The developments are amenable to PICs and may serve as building blocks of all-optical signal processors.
