1. Background

The race towards miniaturization, combined with spectral densification of the amount of information to be processed and increased transfer rates, is undoubtedly one of the major challenges facing research in optical telecommunications systems at the beginning of the 21st century. The design of high-performance, compact solutions for light guidance, multiplexing, and emission seems to require the use of artificial periodic structures, mainly dielectric, known as "photonic crystals." Since the early 1990s and the breakthrough in this field...