Employing Optical Nonlinearity in Photonic Crystals: A Step Towards All-Optical Logic Gates

Abstract

Employing nonlinear elements in photonic crystals (PCs) opens up lots of new design opportunities. In comparison to ordinary linear PC structures, using optically nonlinear elements in PCs leads to the observation of many interesting phenomena that can be utilized to design all-optical devices. Optical bistability in PCs is among the mentioned observations, which due to its many applications has attracted the researchers’ attention. Many optical devices such as limiters, switches, memories can be implemented when nonlinear elements are embedded in PCs. Kerr type nonlinearity is mostly used for this purpose. In this chapter we are going to discuss the benefits of using nonlinearity in photonic crystal devices. Since most of nonlinear optical devices are either based on directional couplers (DCs) or coupled cavity waveguides (CCWs), we have focused on these two groups to provide a better insight into their future prospects.