VI International Telecommunications Symposium (ITS2006), September 3-6, 2006, Fortaleza-CE, Brazil

Analysis of Optical Switching Circuits Based on

Nonlinear Photonic Crystals by the Frequency
Domain Finite Element Method
C. E. Rubio-Mercedes, V. F. Rodrguez-Esquerre and H. E. Hernndez-Figueroa

Abstract  Optical switching devices based on nonlinear

Photonic Crystals are analyzed by an efficient technique based
on the frequency domain finite element method. The solution of
the nonlinear Helmholtz equation is obtained through an
iterative process involving linear problems solution. Also, the
method uses isoparametric curvilinear elements for the spatial
discretization and nonlinear perfectly matched layers to
truncate the computational domain.
Index Terms  Nonlinear photonic crystals, resonant cavities,
optical switching, finite element method, frequency domain.

I. INTRODUCTION
Photonic Crystals (PCs) are a promising platform for large
scale integration of photonic circuits for optical information
processing [1]-[2], [4], [8].
To apply the PCs in advanced technologies such as ultra
short optical functionalities and optical switching, a
dynamical manipulation of the PCs properties is necessary.
These effects can be obtained modulating the refractive index
of the PCs by using electro-optical effects [5], thermo-optical
effects [6] or even using the materials nonlinearities of the
PCs [15-21].
The bistability phenomena in nonlinear PCs can be
explored to design and fabricate optical devices. In such kind
of systems, the transmitted optical power depends strongly on
the nonlinear behavior which is a function of the input power,
showing a critical format in a certain region called the S of
bistability or hysteresis loop.
In this context, the numerical simulation of nonlinear PCs
is extremely important, and it can be done in the frequency
domain [15], [22] or in the time domain [16-21].
Manuscript received March 31, 2006. This work was supported by the
Brazilian Agencies FAPESB, FAPESP Processes CePOF, 04/13761-0, and
05/51339-1, CNPq process 301209/94-4 and FUNDECT process
41/100.055/2005.
C. E. Rubio-Mercedes is with the Center of Exact Sciences and
Technology, State University of Mato Grosso do Sul, Dourados MS, 79804970, Brazil (phone: +55-67-3411-9129/3441-9290; e-mail: cosme@uems.br).
V. F. Rodrguez-Esquerre is with the Department of Electrical and
Electronical Technology, Federal Center of Technological Education of
Bahia, 40300-010, Salvador, Bahia, (phone: +55-71-2102-9456; e-mail:
vitaly@cefetba.br).
H. E. Hernndez-Figueroa is with the Department of Microwave and
Optics, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of
Campinas, 13083-970, Campinas, Brazil (phone: +55-19-3788-3704; e-mail:
hugo@dmo.fee.unicamp.br).

SBrT

699

Nowadays, the finite element method in the time domain

(FETD-BPM) [17] and the finite difference time domain
method (FDTD) [18]-[21] are the more used method to
analyze the light propagation in nonlinear PCs circuits.
However, in order to apply the FETD-BPM, it is necessary to
discretize the entire domain of interest resulting in a big
computational effort in order to obtain a certain degree of
accuracy.
On the other hand, where the FDTD is used, some
simplifications on the models and in the structure are made in
order to apply it. Although the FDTD method is powerful and
versatile, the same needs a very small time step propagation
and very fine meshes to avoid staircasing problems when
curved geometries are modeled, demanding in this way a big
computational effort and resources.
Recently, in order to model discontinuities in nonlinear
optical waveguides, a frequency domain finite element
method (FDFEM) has been reported [14]. Although this
approach can be applied for the nonlinear PCs analysis, this
application has not been reported yet. Also, in [15], another
technique based on the frequency domain finite element
method to analyze nonlinear PC is presented, however, it
demands a long computation time since a big number of
modes are needed.
In this work, the FDFEM [7] has been extended for the
analysis of nonlinear PCs structures. Nonlinear anisotropic
perfectly matched layers (PMLs) are used to avoid reflections
from the computational boundaries and curvilinear
isoparametric elements are used to model accurately the
curvilinear nature of the PCs. All the above considerations
reduce the computational effort and computation time.
This work is organized as follows: In section II numerical
simulations of key optical switching devices are presented
and the conclusions are given in section III.

II. NUMERICAL RESULTS

In order to show the effects of the optical switching in
photonic devices based on nonlinear PC structures, we use a
novel and efficient technique [23]. Two key examples are
here considered; a simple optical switch and a high contrast
optical switch. In all the simulations TE modes (electric field
parallel to the dielectric rods) have been considered.

VI International Telecommunications Symposium (ITS2006), September 3-6, 2006, Fortaleza-CE, Brazil

A. Bistable Switching Device

As a first example, a general bidimensional (2D) structure
as shown in Fig. 1 is considered. The computational domain
is on the plane y-z and there is no variation along the x (d/dx
= 0). PMLs were used to simulate an open boundary
avoiding in this way reflections from the computational
window.

the spectrum. Comparing our results with the published ones

[17], we can observe an small shifting in the resonant
frequency, this shifting can be attributed to the discretization
limitation due to the use of FDTD in [17], where a large
number of degrees of freedom are needed to obtain accurate
results.
1.0

Transmitted Power

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0
0.259 0.260 0.261 0.262 0.263 0.264 0.265 0.266
Normalized Power [ZDSc]

Fig. 1. Geometry of the bistable switch based on nonlinear PCs.

The bistable optical switching consists of nonlinear PCs

where the dielectric rods are in a square lattice and have a
high refractive index, n=3.5. They are embedded into another
dielectric material with low refractive index n =1.5.
The lattice constant, a, was chosen as being a = 0.58Pm,
and the radius of the dielectric rods is r=0.25a. A waveguide
can be obtained by removing a line of rows at the center of
the structure. By increasing the radius of the central rod to
5r/3, a resonant cavity is obtained. This cavity supports a
localized resonant mode. Now, we consider a nonlinearity of
Kerr type with the nonlinear refractive index given by

1.0

1/ 2

0.8

(1)

where the nonlinear coefficient is n2 = 1.5u10-17m2/W and the

linear refractive index is nL=3.5. I represents the electric or
magnetic field as in [23] and Z0 is the free space impedance.
The cavity is connected to the input and output waveguide
ports by placing three dielectric rods along the waveguide.
The structure shows a band gap between the normalized
frequencies Zmin(a/2Sc) = 0.24, and Zmax(a/2Sc) = 0.29 [15],
[17]. Additionally, the cavity is designed to resonate at the
normalized frequency Zres(a/2Sc) = 0.2622 [2], [11], [12].
From the problem symmetry, only half of the structure was
discretized by using 9352 quadratic elements and the
computational domain considered was [-8.43; 8.43]Pm u [3.19; 0.0]Pm.
The spectral distribution of the transmission of the
structure as function of the normalized frequency Za/2Sc is
shown in Fig. 2. For very low input powers, corresponding to
the linear operation of the structure, the quality factor
computed was Q =Zres/J = 660, where J is the bandwidth of

SBrT

Next, to observe the nonlinear effects, a beam with

normalized frequency Za/2Sc = 0.2614, is launched into the
waveguide with a shifting parameter G = (Zres-Z)/J=1.9. The
bistable effect is present for this value in nonlinear PCs [17].
The transmission coefficient as function of the input power is
shown in Fig. 3.

700

Transmitted Power

n
n L 1  2 | I | 2
Z0

Fig. 2. Spectral distribution of the transmission as function of the normalized

frequency, Za/2Sc, corresponding to the structure shown in Fig.1 with low
input power (linear operation). The resonant frequency is Zresa/2Sc = 0.2622.

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0
0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

Pinx9,284 [W/Pm]
Fig. 3. Transmission coefficient as function of the input power for thee
estructure in Fig. 1. When Pin increases the transmission increases slowly
until the bistable region is reached and both states are possible.

It can be observed that for low input powers the output

power is also low because we are operating off-resonance.
When the input power is increased from Pin=0.4

VI International Telecommunications Symposium (ITS2006), September 3-6, 2006, Fortaleza-CE, Brazil

(u9.284W/Pm) to Pin=2.2, we can observe an abrupt

oscillation, apparently due to an unstable behavior in this
region. For input powers higher than Pin=2.2, the
transmission decreases slowly as the input power Pin is
increased. In fact, the unstable region between Pin = 0.4 and
2.2 is a bistable region where the two states are possible.
When the input power level reaches the high threshold,
the device changes its state to the lower energy level. The
same effect is observed when the power is decreased to the
low threshold value.

structure. In this case, the resonant cavity is laterally coupled

to the waveguide. The optical energy inside the cavity shows
a bistable dependence on the input power and it is possible to
obtain switching between the two states with low and high
energy. In general, due to the weak of the nonlinearity, it is
necessary to choose an operating frequency close to the
resonant frequency in order to reduce the required input
power.

Fig. 5. Geometry of a high contrast bistable switching device based on

nonlinear PCs with a laterally coupling of an elliptical resonant cavity to the
waveguide.

(a)

(b)
Fig. 4. Absolute value for the electric field Ex for the bistable switching at
the frequency Za/2Sc = 0.2614, for input powers of (a) Pin = 0.95 and (b)
Pin = 1.05.

Consider a structure as shown in Fig. 5, where the crystal

is composed by dielectric rods with refractive index n=3.4
and radius r = 0.18aPm, where the constant lattice has the
value a= 0.58Pm and the surrounded materials is air, n =1.0.
The resonant cavity supports only one resonant state and has
an elliptical shape with axes 0.36a and a, along the
coordinates z and y, respectively. The defect region has
nonlinearity of Kerr type as given in (1) with a nonlinear
coefficient n2 = 1.5x10-17 m2/W and linear refractive index of
the elliptic rod is nL=1.0. The use of an elliptical rod results
in a single mode cavity allowing the localization of the light
in the nonlinear region.
In Fig. 6, we show the spectral distribution of the
transmission of the nonlinear structure given in Fig. 5 as
function of the normalized frequency for very low input
power which corresponds to a linear behavior of the circuit.
1.0

0.8
Transmitted Power

In Fig. 4 the absolute values of the electric field Ex for

input powers (a) Pin = 0.95 and (b) Pin = 1.05 are shown.
Both cases were excited at the frequency Za/2Sc = 0.2614
and they were discretized by using 9352 quadratic elements.
When the input power is increased, the refractive index
also increases due to the nonlinearities, and shifts the
resonant frequency Zres, from 0.2622 to 0.2614, resulting in
an increasing or decreasing on the transmission, respectively.
These results are in excellent concordance with the
previously published ones [17].

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0
0.37

B. High Contrast Bistable Switching Device

As a second example, another nonlinear structure which
presents an improvement in the extinction ratio of the
transmission when compared with the previous analyzed

SBrT

0.38

0.39

0.40

0.41

Normalized Frequency [ZDSc]

701

Fig. 6. Spectral distribution of the transmission as function of the normalized

frequency, Za/2Sc, for the structure shown in Fig.5 for low input power
(linear operation). The resonant frequency is Zres(a/2Sc) = 0.389.

VI International Telecommunications Symposium (ITS2006), September 3-6, 2006, Fortaleza-CE, Brazil

The resonant frequency was computed to be Zres(a/2Sc) =

0.389, and it is inside the band gap region o the PCs. The
quality factor calculated in this simulation is Q = 340. In this
example, when operating at the resonant frequency the
transmission is totally cancelled because the electric field
suffers destructive interference.
To study the nonlinear behavior, we excite the structure
with the waveguide mode at the frequency Z(a/2Sc) = 0.3863,
with a shifting G= (Zres-Z)/J = 3 (G = 0.5 3 is the
minimum value to observe bistability). The input power was
varied and the transmitted power was computed as shown in
Fig. 7. We can observe the bistable region between Pin =
1.2321 and Pin = 2.9943.

efficient technique based on frequency domain FEM. It was

shown that it is possible to analyze the bistability phenomena
in nonlinear PC with FEM in frequency domain. This
technique uses curvilinear elements with PMLs, making the
scheme considerably efficient. Therefore, this technique
allow determine all the quantities of interest for the design of
nonlinear circuits (resonant frequencies, threshold powers,
and bistable regions).

1.0

Transmitted Power

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

(a)
0.0
0

10

15

20

Pinx9,284 [W/Pm]
Fig. 7. Transmission coefficient as function of the input power for the circuit
shown in Fig. 5.

The absolute value of the electric field Ex is shown in Fig.

8 for the two stable states, obtained with input powers of (a)
Pin = 2.5and (b) Pin= 16.0. In Fig. 8a, which is the state of
high transmission, the cavity is off-resonance then the
coupling is low and can be neglected. Fig.8b corresponds to
the low transmission state. Here, the field intensity inside the
cavity is high, shifting the resonant frequency of the cavity to
the frequency of the incident field. In this case, the coupling
of the cavity field is present and there is destructive
interference with the waveguide field resulting in a high
contrast in the transmission.
Finally, the excitation of both states with the same input
power in the frequency domain is under consideration and
results will be reported soon.

III. CONCLUSIONS

Fig. 8. Absolute value of the electric field Ex at the frequency Za/2Sc =

0.3863, computed using 7719 isoparametric elements and for incident
powers of (a) Pin = 7.0 and (b) Pin=8.0.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A powerful principle that could be explored to implement alloptical transistors, switches, logical gates, and memory is the
concept of optical bistability. We have analyzed nonlinear
circuits and the nonlinear effects that can be used for optical
switching allowing optical processing of signals by using a

SBrT

(b)

702

The authors thank to FUNDECT (41/100.055/2005),

FAPESP (CePOF and 05/51339-1), CNPq (301209/94-4) and
FAPESB for the financial support.

VI International Telecommunications Symposium (ITS2006), September 3-6, 2006, Fortaleza-CE, Brazil

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