A PHOTONIC DEVICE MATERIAL CHARACTERISTICS

In this section are summarized some of the characteristics of the material used to
realize photonic devices.
All the materials we will consider are dielectric materials that in general can be
macroscopically characterized in all their properties with the dielectric constant and
all the effects we will consider as variations (typically perturbations) respect to the
background dielectric constant.
We will consider:
- the effects due to the presence of charges in the media (intraband effects) in
section Aa,
- the photon interactions with electron-hole (inter band effects) in
semiconductor materials in section Ab
- the electro-optic effect and the electro absorption effect in section Ac

Aa- PROPAGATION IN A LOSSY DIELECTRIC MEDIA

We review here some concept done in previous courses that we will use in this
course.
We will only consider dielectric media and therefore we assume =0 and in general
the permittivity constant and the refractive index will be complex:
and
The complex propagation constant

where

will be:

and
,

where

and

In order to have more inside in the previously written equations is useful to

associate them to specific physical effects and to their models.
In the following we introduce the model for:
- a conducting media characterized by a conductivity
- a dielectric media consisting in a collection of resonant atoms: Lorentz Dipole
model
- the Drude model for the conductivity in metals and in semiconductor.

Media with conductivity

The is the well known case in which we can write a relation between the current
density and the electric field
that can be directly included in the Maxwel
equation

that allows to define a complex permittivity

constant

and the propagation

for low frequency when

known skin depth parameter

and the well

where

The equation for the displacement of the electron is

The permittivity function following from this model is

and

and
And at infinite frequency

and

and
Approximation valid when
the contribution is much smaller than the background permittivity. We have also:
and

or

where

For a time harmonic field

and
where

is the dc conductivity,

is the plasma frequency and

Such waveguides will be discussed later on.

Similar curves for Gold, Silver and Aluminum are reported below as a function of
the wavelength.

where

In semiconductor material =1/in where in is the intraband relaxation time.

and

where here n=N.

and

where

In the figure below an example of the contribution to the refractive index variation

MATERIAL DISPERSION
In all material dispersion effects are present and correspond to the variation of the
refractive index with wavelength.
In the following page are reported the refractive indices at some wavelengths of
some material used in optics.
We report also, as an example, the results for the silica (SiO2). The refractive index
can be approximated with the following expression:

where
Whose plot is

From this curve is possible to evaluate two important parameters:

- the group velocity vg and
- the dispersion D.
The group velocity corresponds to the velocity of propagation of the pulse envelope
or of the pulse energy and is related to the first derivative of n as reported below:

Frequently in the literature and in this course is introduced the definition of group
index that in analogy to the refractive index is defined as ng= c/vg and its expression
is the denominator of the previous equations
The dispersion D, which is related to the second derivative of n, is associated to the
pulse spreading during propagation and represent how the propagation time is
changing with the various spectral components of the pulse. It is a quantity defined
per unit propagation length and per unit bandwidth and is:
.

In optical fiber the used unit is: ps/nm-km.

Results for vg and D for SiO2 are reported below: