Mode anti-crossing and carrier transport effects in tunable photonic crystal coupled-cavity lasers

We report the tuning characteristics of a widely tunable photonic crystal coupled-cavity laser and find good agreement with simulations based on a transfer matrix algorithm. The device consists of two photonic crystal channel wave-guides that are longitudinally coupled through a photonic crystal section. The cavity modes exhibit slightly different mode spacing and allow a wavelength switching by utilizing the Vernier effect. The supermodes of the integrated structure exhibit an anti-crossing behavior as a result of the contra-directional coupling between the two resonant cavities. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.