Measurement of the temporal delay of a light pulse through a one-dimensional photonic crystal

We measure a maximum group delay of 22.6 ps for a light pulse propagating through a 1 cm long fiber Bragg grating when the frequency of the light is tuned near the band edge of the grating. Our measurements are performed in the time domain with single picosecond resolution using wavelength-tunable pulses of 0.5 nm bandwidth spectrally sliced from a mode-locked laser. Our experimental results are qualitatively confirmed by our numerical simulations. Promising applications include optical delay elements for phased-array radar and encoders/decoders in spread-spectrum code-division multiple-access systems. ©1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 20: 17–21, 1999.