2D-FDTD Electromagnetic Simulation of an Ultracompact All-Optical Logic Gate Based on 2D Photonic Crystal for Ultrafast Applications

Abstract

In this paper, the concept of photonic crystals (PhCs) is fundamental to the design and simulation of an all-optical device. The proposed logic device is composed of two-dimensional (2D) photonic crystal waveguides with a central photonic crystal ring resonator (PCRR). The new all-optical NAND logic gate is composed of two linear waveguides coupled to each other through a single compact PCRR. The plane wave expansion (PWE) and finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) methods are used to analyze the behavior of the structure that is implemented on the operational wavelength of 1700 nm on an air wafer of only 12 µm × 12 µm. The simulation results show that the proposed all-optical NAND gate is a strong candidate to be used for ultrafast photonic integrated circuits (PICs) being highly advantageous with high transmitting power, simple design and without use of the optical amplifiers and nonlinear materials.