Compact and efficient injection of light into band-edge slow-modes

We design compact (a few wavelength long) and efficient (>99%) injectors for coupling light into slow Bloch modes of periodic thin film stacks and of periodic slab waveguides. The study includes the derivation of closed-form expressions for the injection efficiency as a function of the group-velocity of injected light, and the proof that 100% coupling efficiencies for arbitrary small group velocities is possible with an injector length scaling as log(c/v(g)). The trade-off between the injector bandwidth and the group velocity of the injected light is also considered. (C) 2007 Optical Society of America