Design of aperiodic demultiplexers and optical diodes by optimizing photonic crystals

Abstract

We apply a previously developed approach for the automated design of optical structures to two cases. This approach reduces the basis of the electromagnetic system to obtain fast gradient-based optimization. In the first case, an existing photonic crystal demultiplexer is optimized for higher power transmission and lower crosstalk. In the second, new optical diodes for plane- and cylindrical-wave incidence are designed using a photonic crystal as a starting point. Highly efficient and aperiodic devices are obtained in all cases. These results indicate that aperiodic devices produced by this automated design method can outperform their analytically-obtained counterparts and encourage its application to other photonic crystal-based devices.