Intrinsic losses of coupled-cavity waveguides in planar-photonic crystals

Coupled-cavity waveguides (CCWs) allow light propagation with strong field confinement in the cavities and small group velocity, which greatly enhances the efficiency of nonlinear effects. In addition, guided modes have zero dispersion at the central region of the transmission miniband. We show that CCWs created in planar photonic crystals, in which index guiding is required in some spatial dimensions, are intrinsically lossy in the region of zero dispersion, which strongly limits their use in nonlinear applications and devices.