High-contrast light-by-light switching and AND gate based on nonlinear photonic crystals

We present a light-by-light photonic crystal configuration consisting of a bent waveguide with three embedded Kerr-type nonlinear rods and a T-branch waveguide. We show that such a configuration can also demonstrate all-optical AND gate operation with extremely high contrast between the OFF state and the ON state in its transmission. The photonic crystal configuration of all-optical light-by-light switching is simple and thus facilitates the fabrication of practical all-optical devices and further large-scale optical integration. (c) 2006 Optical Society of America.