Editor's Summary

3 November 2005

Silicon enhanced

Photonic crystals could become the silicon chips of optoelectronics, engineered to control the properties of photons in much the same way that the atomic lattice of a semiconductor controls electrons. Yurii Vlasov and co-workers at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center have applied photonic crystal technology to 'slow light'. In this still-new field, pulses of light are drastically slowed and even brought to a halt in various atomic and solid-state systems where material absorption is countered by optical pumping. This has potential in applications ranging from all-optical storage to optical switching. Vlasev et al. demonstrate an over 300-fold reduction of the group velocity of a light pulse on a silicon chip via an ultra-compact photonic integrated circuit utilizing low-loss silicon photonic crystal waveguides. The cover shows a scanning electron micrograph of the experimental setup.

Letter: Active control of slow light on a chip with photonic crystal waveguides

Yurii A. Vlasov, Martin O'Boyle, Hendrik F. Hamann and Sharee J. McNab

doi:10.1038/nature04210

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