The effect of disorder on two-dimensional photonic crystal waveguides

We investigate the effect of positional disorder on two-dimensional photonic crystal waveguides created by removing a line of cells from a finite 11x11 square lattice. By using transverse magnetic and transverse electric waves, we have studied three different configurations: disorder throughout the whole crystal, disorder only in the waveguide border, and disorder in the whole crystal except the waveguide border. We found that the waveguide performance is quite robust against disorder in the case where the waveguide border is not affected by disorder. In the other cases, disorder changes the size of the waveguide channel, which has a detrimental effect on the performance of the waveguide. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.