On-Chip Switch and Add/Drop Multiplexer Design With Left-Handed Behavior in Photonic Crystals

An integrated optical switch consisting of a Mach-Zehnder Interferometer with photonic crystals-based phase shifters is designed for telecom wavelength range. The phase modulation along the two arms of the interferometer comes from the photonic band-to-band transition on the photonic crystals that leads to a large effective index difference and results in a switching/modulation-with a low-voltage, small optical interaction length, and a low insertion loss. Moreover, shifting along the same photonic band is utilized for constructing a fully reconfigurable add-drop multiplexer for tunable wavelength range with a broadband response.