Improving the performance of all-optical logic gates based on metal-insulator-metal heterogeneous plasmonic waveguide by Kerr nonlinearity effect

Abstract

In this paper, the nonlinear effect of Kerr on increasing the efficiency of multi-channel all-optical metal-insulator-metal logic gates with heterogeneous metals is investigated. In this study, linear interference between surface plasmonic polariton modes has been employed. The performance of OR, AND, XOR and NOR gates is numerically analyzed by the finite element method. A structure with fixed physical dimensions can manage several basic logic functions. By applying optical signals to various input ports in the proposed structure, we can implement OR, AND, and XOR logic functions. The NOR logic gate can be established by the addition of a control optical signal. It has been shown that the nonlinear material of Kerr increases the difference of field intensity between logic levels of "0" and "1" that are 77 V/m for OR gate, 133 V/m for AND gate, 89 V/m for XOR gate, and 138 V/m for NOR gate. Also, simulation results show the minimum extinction ratio (ER) of 33.5, 36.4, 45.4, and 42.4 dB for OR, AND, XOR, and NOR logic gates, respectively. The proposed all-optical logic gate has a simple and compact arrangement and it can be applied to many nanophotonic components used in optical communication networks.