Multi-frequency complete optical isolation based on indirect interband transition

Abstract

Indirect interband photonic transition is an important approach to achieve on-chip complete optical signal isolation. We demonstrate that the operational isolation bandwidth based on this effect can be increased by utilizing non-interfering transition channels obtained from the process of transition channel engineering. Multiple optical modes can be excited through non-interfering channels and be absorbed by matched filters without interfering with each other, thus achieving multi-frequency complete optical isolation. With two non-interfering transition channels, an optical isolator design that achieves complete isolation at two frequencies is proposed as an example. The potential design of multi-frequency isolator is also discussed. All the results are verified with finite-difference time-domain simulation.