Energy flow in photonic crystal waveguides

Theoretical and numerical investigations of energy flow in photonic crystal waveguides made of line defects and branching points are presented. It is shown that vortices of energy flow may occur, and the net energy flow along : the line defect is described via the effective propagation velocity. Sing le-mode and multimode operations are studied, and dispersion relations are computed for different waveguide widths. Both strong positive, strong negat ive, and zero dispersion an possible. It is shown that geometric parameters such as the nature of the lattice, the line defect orientation, the defect width, and the branching-point geometry have a significant influence on th e electrodynamics. These are important issues for the fabrication of photon ic crystal structures.