Optical Diode Based on Two-Dimensional Photonic Crystal

Abstract

The integrated optical diodes have been a thriving research theme due to their potential on-chip applications in photonic circuits for all-optical computing and information processing. Analogous to electronic counterparts, the unidirectional light propagation is characterized by the high contrast between forward and backward transmissions. In this chapter, we demonstrate the proposed schemes and designs for reciprocal and nonreciprocal optical diodes based on two-dimensional (2D) photonic crystal (PhC). The reciprocal devices are built by linear and passive PhC, and the spatial asymmetric mode conversion is utilized to achieve the unidirectionality. The presented nonreciprocal optical diodes rely on the optical nonlinearity of cavity. New 2D PhC optical diodes with high contrast ratio, low insertion loss, large operational bandwidth, small device footprint, and ease of fabrication are highly desirable and still pursued.