Unidirectional light propagation photonic crystal waveguide incorporating modified defects

Abstract

In this paper, we have proposed a design of an Optical Diode-like in two-dimensional (2D) Photonic Crystal (PC) waveguide. The proposed device consists of 2D square-lattice PC structures, and it is based on two PC waveguides with different symmetric guiding modes, where various configurations of defects, including elliptic or/and semi-circular defects have been incorporated. The proposed one-way light propagation Optical Diode has been designed and optimized by employing in-house 2D Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) numerical method. We have reported that the unidirectional light propagation depends strongly on the coupling region between the introduced defects and the adjacent waveguides, and it also depends on the matching and mismatching between the defects and waveguide modes. It has been shown also that owing to its tunable features, the proposed Optical Diode can be potentially applied as a building block in future complex optical integrated circuits.