Stopping and Time Reversal of Light in Dynamic Photonic Structures via Bloch Oscillations

It is theoretically shown that storage and time-reversal of light pulses can be achieved in a coupled-resonator optical waveguide by dynamic tuning of the cavity resonances without maintaining the translational invariance of the system. The control exploits the Bloch oscillation motion of a light pulse in presence of a refractive index ramp, and it is therefore rather different from the mechanism of adiabatic band compression and reversal proposed by Yanik and Fan in recent works [M.F. Yanik and S. Fan, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 083901 (2004); Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 173903 (2004)].