Compact resonant electro-optic modulator using randomness of a photonic crystal waveguide

We fabricate and demonstrate an electro-optic modulator that utilizes the randomness in a photonic crystal waveguide. We exploit a way of using random photonic crystals for device application that involves restricting the area influenced by the randomness. Our random photonic crystal waveguide is in a diffusive regime and the confinement of light is observed only for a W0.98 waveguide (98% of the original width) placed between W1.05 photonic crystal waveguides, where we obtained a transmittance spectrum with an ultra-high Q of 2.4 × 10⁵. A numerical investigation revealed that the experimental yield rate of the appearance of the high-Q confined mode is larger than 80%, by properly designing the length of W0.98. Since the confinement location is predictable, we integrate a p-i-n structure and demonstrate a GHz electro-optic modulation.