High-contrast light-by-light switching and AND gate based on nonlinear photonic crystals

Abstract

We present a light-by-light photonic crystal configuration consisting of a bend waveguide with three embedded Kerr-type nonlinear rods and a T-branch waveguide. We show that such a configuration can also demonstrate all-optical AND gate operation with extremely high-contrast between the OFF state and ON state in its transmission. Because the presented photonic crystal configuration of all-optical light-by-light switching is simple, this facilitates fabricating practical all-optical devices and further large-scale optical integration.