Open Access25-channel all-optical gate switches realized by integrating silicon photonic crystal nanocavities
Author(s) -
Kengo Nozaki,
Eiichi Kuramochi,
Akihiko Shinya,
Masaya Notomi
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - Uncategorized
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.22.014263
Subject(s) - optical switch , photonic crystal , materials science , optoelectronics , optics , photonic integrated circuit , silicon photonics , wavelength division multiplexing , photonics , channel (broadcasting) , wavelength , physics , telecommunications , computer science
Silicon-based photonic crystal nanocavities with different lattice pitches were monolithically integrated with a total length of only 200 μm, and were operated as a multi-channel all-optical switch with a large processing density of 42 Tb/s/mm2. A pump light and a signal light were assigned to two cavity modes in each cavity, and in this way all-optical gate switching was achieved in a 25 channel resonant dip with an energy cost in the femtojoule regime. We also demonstrated a wavelength-division multiplexing operation by selecting three neighboring channels, and thus achieved gate switching without inter-channel optical crosstalk. As far as we know, this was the first demonstration of a many-channel all-optical switch that can handle an optical signal with bit-by-bit Gb/s repetition in an integrated photonic crystal chip.