Design and simulation of an all-optical photonic crystal AND gate using nonlinear Kerr effect

A photonic crystal optical limiter with a sharp input-output characteristic curve is initially designed in this paper. Thereafter; using an optimized Y-junction, a new topology for an all-optical photonic crystal AND gate is proposed. The mentioned gate has a transition time less than 1 ps, a delay time less than 0.4 ps and occupies an area less than 100 μm2. The 1,550 nm input lasers should have a power equal to 10W to be able to trigger the switching mechanism. The photonic crystal used for this purpose is a two dimensional triangular lattice of holes in a GaAs substrate. PWE and FDTD methods are used to simulate the proposed structure. Time domain simulations confirm the switching mechanism of the proposed AND gate.