Ultrafast reconfigurable nanoscale optical switch based on photonic crystal waveguide

Abstract

We propose reconfigurable photonic switches with very low input power, ultracompact size, fast response, and low optical loss for high-speed optical network and on-chip interconnect applications. The photonic crystal waveguide-based nanostructure is used to realize the reconfigurable 3 × 3 and 4 × 4 optical switches. The two different operating wavelengths of 1550 and 1630 nm play a significant role in the nanophotonic switching platform. The reconfiguration of optical signal path is effectively attained using these wavelengths with low delay time and high data rate. The performance of nanoswitch parameters is numerically investigated by the finite-difference time-domain method. The proposed optical switch is designed with a low input power of 0.5 mW, fast response time of 607.33 fs, and high data rate of 1.646 Tbps. This high-performance device can be suitable for lightwave communication network, quantum computing, and nanoscale photonic integrated systems.