Ultracompact linear on-chip silicon optical logic gates with phase insensitivity

¹ Laboratory of Optical Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences - P. O. Box 603, Beijing 100190, China
² Shandong Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber Sensing Technologies, Laser Institute of Shandong Academy of Sciences - Jinan, Shandong, 250014, China

^(a) lizy@aphy.iphy.ac.cn

Received: 2 July 2013
Accepted: 11 September 2013

Abstract

All-optical integrated circuits for computing and information processing have been pursued for decades as a potential strategy to overcome the speed limitations intrinsic to electronics. However, feasible on-chip integrated logic units and devices still have been limited by their size, quality, scalability, and reliability. Here we analyse all-passive on-chip optical AND and NAND logic gates made from a directional emitting cavity connecting two ultrasmall photonic-crystal heterojunction diodes. The measured transmission spectra show more than 10 dB contrast of the logic transport with a high phase tolerance, agreeing well with numerical simulations. The building of linear, passive, and ultracompact silicon optical logic gates might pave the way to construct novel nanophotonic on-chip processor architectures for future optical computing technologies.