Wavelength selective switching application of one dimensional defect photonic crystal

Abstract

A simple design of thermally tunable single channel optical filter is suggested by using transfer matrix method (TMM) at normal incidence. This filter is composed of one-dimensional photonic crystal with low temperature superconductor defect for switching optical communication wavelengths used in coarse wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM) based optical networks. It is capable of selecting and switching any one wavelength channel at a time centered at particular wavelength out of 9 CWDM wavelength channels as per the international telecommunication union (ITU) grid G.694.2. Though the spectral width of each channel of conventional CWDM channels should be between 13-15 nm, the spectral width of the defect mode of the proposed thermally tunable optical filter varies from 3-6 nm. Thus it makes the contraption to be used efficiently for narrowband wavelength selective switching (WSS) application. Such filters have potential applications in remote sensing and thermal imaging.