Coupled-cavity distributed-resonance photodetectors

A new type of resonant enhanced photodetectors based on the 1D photonic bandgap is proposed. It can potentially overcome problems encountered in resonant-cavity-enhanced photodetectors. Resonating structures with very high quality factors and large free spectral ranges can be obtained by varying the optical parameters of the gratin overlay without the presence of rigid design constraints. The use of coupled-cavities with distributed resonances is discussed. In particular, we demonstrate that the exploitation of cascaded structures allows resonant-enhanced parallel detection of wavelength division multiplexed optical signals.