Photonic crystal heterostructure with self-collimation effect for broad-band asymmetric optical transmission
Authors: Fei Hong-Ming , Yan Shuai , Xu Yu-Cheng , Lin Han , Wu Min , Yang Yi-Biao , Chen Zhi-Hui , Tian Yuan , Zhang Ya-Min ,   College of Physics and Optoelectronics, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China,   Key Laboratory of Advanced Transducers and Intelligent Control System, Ministry of Education, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China,   Centre for Translational Atomaterials, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne 3122, Australia
Published: December 2020

Recently, quantum computing and information processing based on photons has become one research frontier, attracting significant attentions. The optical asymmetric transmission devices (OATD), having similar function to the diode in electric circuitry, will find important applications. In particular, the OATDs based on nanophotonic structures are preferred due to their potential applications in the on-chip integration with other photonic devices. Therefore, there have been numerous applications of OATDs based on different nanostructures, including composite grating structures, metasurfaces, surface plasmon polaritons, metamaterials, photonic crystals (PhCs). However, in general, those designs show relatively low forward transmittance (< 0.5) and narrow working bandwidth (< 100 nm), and they are able to work with only one polarization state. This makes the current OATDs unsuitable for many applications. To solve this challenge, here we design a two-dimensional (2D) PhC heterostructure based on the self-collimating effect and bandgap properties. The PhC heterostructure is composed of two square lattice 2D PhCs (PhC 1 and PhC 2) on a silicon substrate with different lattice shapes and lattice constants. The PhC 1 is composed of periodically arranged silicon cylinders in air. Meanwhile, the PhC 2 is an square air hole array embedding in silicon. The two PhCs are integrated with an inclined interface with an angle of 45° with respect to the direction of incident light. The plane wave expansion method is used to calculate the band diagrams and equal frequency contours (EFCs) of the two PhCs. As the propagation directions of light waves in PhCs are determined by the gradient direction of the EFCs, we are able to control the light propagation by controlling the EFCs of PhCs. By engineering the EFCs, the PhC 2 shows strong self-collimation effect in a broad wavelength range with a central wavelength of 1550 nm for both TE and TM polarization. By self-collimating the forward incident light from different incident angles to couple to the output waveguide, we are able to significantly increase the forward transmittance to > 0.5 for both TE and TM polarized light. Meanwhile, the backward transmittance can be effectively cut off by the unique dispersion properties of the PhC heterostructures. In this way, the heterostructure is able to achieve polarization independent asymmetric transmission of light waves in a broad wavelength range. To visualize the light propagation in the PhC heterostructure, we use the finite-difference-time-domain method to calculate the electric intensity distributions of the forward and backward propagation light of both TE and TM polarization at a wavelength of 1550 nm. Strong self-collimation effect of forward propagation light and the nearly complete blockage of backward propagation light can be identified unambiguously in the intensity plots, confirming the theoretical analysis. The calculation of transmittance and contrast ratio spectra show that the asymmetric transmission wavelength bandwidth can reach 532 nm with the forward transmittance and contrast ratio being 0.693 and 0.946 at an optical communication wavelength of 1550 nm for TE polarized light. On the other hand, for the TM polarized light, the asymmetric transmission wavelength bandwidth is 128 nm, the forward transmittance and contrast ratio are 0.513 and 0.972, respectively, at 1550 nm wavelength. Thus, it is confirmed that the PhC heterostructure achieves highly efficient, broadband and polarization independent asymmetric transmission. Finally, to further improve the forward transmittance of the TE polarized light, we modulate the radius of the front row of photonic lattice of PhC 1 at the interface. It shows that the forward transmittance can be further improved to a record high value of 0.832 with a bandwidth of 562 nm for TE polarized light. Our design opens up new possibilities for designing OATDs based on PhCs, and will find broad applications, for the design can be realized by current nanofabrication techniques.