The effects of short-range disorder on the polarization characteristics of light in photonic crystal waveguides were investigated using finite-difference time-domain simulations with a view to investigating the stability of polarization singularities. It was found that points of local circular polarization ($C$ points) and contours of linear polarization ($L$ lines) continued to appear even in the presence of high levels of disorder, and that they remained close to their positions in the ordered crystal. These results are a promising indication that devices exploiting polarization in these structures are viable given current fabrication standards.

• Received 19 August 2015
• Revised 27 October 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.92.063819