On chip optical isolator based on non-linear silicon photonic crystal by using asymmetric engineering waveguide

Abstract

We propose an optical isolator formed in a nanoscale structure based on non-linear silicon photonic crystal that can be easily realized on an optical integrated chip. The structure comprises an engineered waveguide that is coupled to a L2 cavity. By using a passive ultra-compact cavity-based isolator, without changing incident characteristics such as mode or frequency in outputs, an admirable transmission contrast of 20.5 dB with a small insertion loss (in the forward direction) of −14.8 dB is achieved. The isolator attains a broad isolating linewidth operation of 0.9 nm without bistability response that is outstanding in comparison with the currently proposed cavity-based isolators. The non-linear Fano resonances that are created by the interplay between the non-linearity and spatial asymmetry notion in the structure play a critical role in the isolator efficiency. In this study, the finite-difference time-domain and finite element methods are used for simulations.