Defects and photonic wells in one-dimensional photonic lattices

The concept of local photonic lattice (PL) is introduced in 1D photonic lattices (PL's) to interpret the defects as donor-like or acceptor-like within any band gap of the host PL. Based on the concept of the local PL, an analysis is presented on the tunability of a movable defect which would be used as a tunable frequency filter. By further extending the local PL, we introduce a 1D photonic well composed of the well-like 1D PL sandwiched by the barrier-like 1D PL's. Similarity is investigated between the 1D photonic wells and the semiconductor quantum wells (QW's). It is shown that the bound states are well described by the effective ''mass'' approximation in analogy to the QW's. These bound states appear as sharp peaks in the transmission spectrum of the finite size 1D photonic well.