Separation of photonic crystal waveguides modes using femtosecond time-of-flight

We demonstrate that ultrabroadband ultrashort-pulse white light supercontinua can be used to track the group velocity of photons in optical waveguides using a Kerr gate technique. Results on silicon nitride slab waveguides show both polarization birefringence and multimode dispersion, which vanish at critical wavelengths. When photonic crystals are embedded in the waveguides, the higher order modes are excited within the band-gap region, demonstrating the need to control their dispersion to make effective use of photonic crystal waveguide devices. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.