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Ultrafast all-optical switching in a silicon-polymer compound slotted photonic crystal nanobeam cavity

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Abstract

On-chip ultrafast all-optical switching is highly desirable and important for all-optical information processing and photonic integrated circuits (PIC). Although numerous theoretical and experimental all-optical switching has been demonstrated, feasible switching scheme with compact size, ultrafast response, ultralow switching energy and ease to fabricate is still challenging. In this paper, we theoretically and numerically study the all-optical switching based on the Fano resonance in a silicon-polymer compound photonic crystal nanobeam side-coupled with a slotted nanobeam cavity. On one hand, owing to the cavity mode confined in the slotted region filled with polymer materials, the overwhelmingly large Kerr coefficient and ultrafast response can be fully utilized. Fano resonances with sharp asymmetric lineshape is in favor of improving switching operation on the other hand. Even under the excitation of 100 fs pump pulse, obvious all-optical switching can be achieved. Sub-picojoule switching energy, 462 fs switching time and switching contrast as high as 55.6% are realized simultaneously. Our proposed structure is compatible with the complementary-metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology, which shows great potential in realizing high-performance and practical integratable all-optical switching.

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Data Availability

The datasets are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 62131018), in part by the Research and Development Planning Project in Key Areas of Guangdong Province (Grant no. 2020B090924001), in part by the Guangzhou Science and Technology Planning Project (Grant no. 202002030210), in part by the Guangdong Introducing Innovative and Entrepreneurial Teams of “The Pearl River Talent Recruitment Program” 2019ZT08X340.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510006, China

    Jin-Yue Su, Xun-Qiang Huang, Han-Lei Xu, Jin-Yun Zhou & Zi-Ming Meng

  2. Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Information Photonics Technology, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510006, China

    Jin-Yun Zhou & Zi-Ming Meng

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  1. Jin-Yue Su
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Su, JY., Huang, XQ., Xu, HL. et al. Ultrafast all-optical switching in a silicon-polymer compound slotted photonic crystal nanobeam cavity. Opt Rev 30, 33–40 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10043-022-00779-4

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