Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 28, 2026
Fabrication And Characterization Of Photonic Crystal Slow Light Waveguides And Cavities
Published on: November 30, 2012
Ultracompact all-optical XOR logic gate in a slow-light silicon photonic crystal waveguide
1Centre for Ultrahigh-bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS), School of Physics, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. husko@physics.usyd.edu.au
Abstract:
We demonstrate an ultracompact, chip-based, all-optical exclusive-OR (XOR) logic gate via slow-light enhanced four-wave mixing (FWM) in a silicon photonic crystal waveguide (PhCWG). We achieve error-free operation (<10⁻⁹) for 40 Gbit/s differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) signals with a 2.8 dB power penalty. Slowing the light to vg = c/32 enables a FWM conversion efficiency, η, of -30 dB for a 396 μm device. The nonlinear FWM process is enhanced by 20 dB compared to a relatively fast mode of vg = c/5. The XOR operation requires ≈ 41 mW, corresponding to a switching energy of 1 pJ/bit. We compare the slow-light PhCWG device performance with experimentally demonstrated XOR DPSK logic gates in other platforms and discuss scaling the device operation to higher bit-rates. The ultracompact structure suggests the potential for device integration.
