A Semi-Analytical Model for Numerical Study of a Photonic Crystal Coupled Resonator Optical Waveguide With Disorder

This paper addresses the relation between fabrication imperfections and the performance of a photonic crystal coupled resonator optical waveguide (CROW). A semi-analytical model is presented, which calculates the perturbation of the coupling coefficients through their derivatives with respect to geometric characteristics of the rods of the photonic crystal lattice. Once these derivatives are calculated, it becomes possible to estimate the transfer functions of a large number of randomly perturbed devices at a small additional computational cost. This enables the statistical study of many performance issues of CROWs, such as the amplitude and position of the device's resonances. The model can be used to study the influence of imperfections of different strengths and types on CROWs of various lengths.