Depositing light in a photonic stop gap by use of Kerr nonlinear microresonators

We show theoretically that it is possible to trap light in a microresonator structure by use of four-wave mixing. The efficiency of the parametric process is substantially increased by the high group delay of light inside the structure. The energy that is trapped has a half-life of approximately 500 ps in the presence of both linear and nonlinear loss in the channel waveguides and resonators. We also demonstrate that the energy can be extracted from the cavity with a similar process. (C) 2003 Optical Society of America.