The aim behind this work is to investigate the capabilities of nonlinear photonic crystals to achieve ultra-fast optical limiters based on third order nonlinear effects. The purpose is to combine the actions of nonlinear effects with the properties of photonic crystals in order to activate the photonic band according to the magnitude of the nonlinear effects, themselves a function of incident laser power. We are interested in designing an optical limiter based nonlinear photonic crystal operating around 1064 nm and its second harmonic at 532 nm. Indeed, a very powerful solid-state laser that can blind or destroy optical sensors and is widely available and easy to handle. In this work, we perform design and optimization by numerical simulations to determine the better structure for the nonlinear photonic crystal to achieve compact and efficient integrated optical limiter. The approach consists to analyze the band structures in Kerr-nonlinear two-dimensional photonic crystals as a function of the optical intensity. We confirm that these bands are dynamically red-shifted with regard to the bands observed in linear photonic crystals or in the case of weak nonlinear effects. The implemented approach will help to understand such phenomena as intensitydriven optical limiting with Kerr-nonlinear photonic crystals.

Date Published: 18 April 2016
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 9885, Photonic Crystal Materials and Devices XII, 98851D (18 April 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2227341

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9885:
Photonic Crystal Materials and Devices XII
Dario Gerace; Gabriel Lozano; Christelle Monat; Sergei G. Romanov, Editor(s)