Time Delay Properties of a Fabry-Perot Interferometer

Time delay properties of a Fabry-Perot interferometer are investigated. We found that the group velocity of light through a Fabry-Pérot interferometer can be reduced to 10^-4 of the light speed in vacuum and the time delay is 210 ns, when the reflectivity is 0.999 and the distance between two mirrors is 1cm. The system is analogous to the recently proposed one-dimensional photonic band-gap structures with a defect Zhu et al. Opt. Commun. 174(2000)139