Abstract

Photonic crystals, materials with periodic dielectric structures, are able to control the propagation states of photons owing to the so-called photonic-bandgap effect¹. Nonlinear photonic crystals, whose refractive-index distribution can be tuned optically, have been used to demonstrate all-optical switching². However, a high pump intensity is usually required because the nonlinear optical coefficient of conventional materials is relatively small³. Here we report ultrafast and low-power photonic-crystal all-optical switching based on strong optical nonlinearity enhancement due to excited-state interelectron transfer. Compared with the case without nonlinearity enhancement, the switching operation power is reduced by four orders of magnitude while the ultrafast response time, of the order of a picosecond, is maintained. This provides a strategy for constructing photonic materials with large nonlinearity and studying ultrafast low-power integrated photonic devices.

1. State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics, Department of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China

Correspondence to: Qihuang Gong¹ e-mail: qhgong@pku.edu.cn

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