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Applied Physics Letters

High-contrast all optical bistable switching in coupled nonlinear photonic crystal microcavities

Shaohui Li, Xuhong Cai

Published Mar 29, 2010• 33 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a photonic crystal configuration consisting of a waveguide directly coupled to two microcavities with instantaneous Kerr nonlinearity. We prove that such a configuration can function as a high contrast all optical switch with properly misaligning the resonant frequencies of the constitutional photonic crystal microcavities.
DOI
10.1063/1.3378812

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We present a bistable photonic crystal configuration consisting of a waveguide directly coupled to three microcavities with instantaneous Kerr nonlinearity. Coupled mode theory combined with a numerical simulation based on the finite-difference time-domain technique is employed to design and evaluate the optical configuration. We demonstrate that with the proper choice of resonant frequencies of the constitutional photonic crystal microcavities, such a configuration can function as a high contrast switch, and the contrast between the bistable states in its transmission can be as high as 300. We expect this device to be useful in the practical application of all-optical switches.
We analyze the resonant linear and nonlinear transmission through a photonic crystal waveguide side-coupled to a Kerr-nonlinear photonic crystal resonator. First, we extend the standard coupled-mode theory analysis to photonic crystal structures and obtain explicit analytical expressions for the bistability thresholds and transmission coefficients which provide the basis for a detailed understanding of the possibilities associated with these structures. Next, we discuss limitations of standard coupled-mode theory and present an alternative analytical approach based on the effective discrete equations derived using a Green's function method. We find that the discrete nature of the photonic crystal waveguides allows a geometry-driven enhancement of nonlinear effects by shifting the resonator location relative to the waveguide, thus providing an additional control of resonant waveguide transmission and Fano resonances. We further demonstrate that this enhancement may result in the lowering of the bistability threshold and switching power of nonlinear devices by several orders of magnitude. Finally, we show that employing such enhancements is of paramount importance for the design of all-optical devices based on slow-light photonic crystal waveguides.
We analyze the resonant transmission of light through a photonic-crystal waveguide side coupled to a Kerr nonlinear cavity, and demonstrate how to design the structure geometry for achieving bistability and all-optical switching at ultralow powers in the slow-light regime. We show that the resonance quality factor in such structures scales inversely proportional to the group velocity of light at the resonant frequency and thus grows indefinitely in the slow-light regime. Accordingly, the power threshold required for all-optical switching in such structures scales as a square of the group velocity, rapidly vanishing in the slow-light regime.
We have demonstrated all-optical bistable switching operation of resonant-tunnelling devices with ultra-small high-Q Si photonic-crystal nanocavities. Due to their high Q/V ratio, the switching energy is extremely small in comparison with that of conventional devices using the same optical nonlinear mechanism. We also show that they exhibit all-opticaltransistor action by using two resonant modes. These ultrasmall unique nonlinear bistable devices have potentials to function as various signal processing functions in photonic-crystal-based optical-circuits.