S. MIKROULIS, H. SIMOS, E. RODITI, D. SYVRIDIS
Investigation of a High Speed All-Optical “AND” Logic Gate in a Passive InP-Based Microring Resonator

Abstract.
An all-optical AND gate utilizing the Four-wave mixing (FWM) effect in an InGaAsP/InP microring resonator side-coupled to a bus waveguide is proposed and modelled. Semiconductor microring resonators have already been demonstrated as all-optical gates using two-photon absorption (TPA) as the switching mechanism. However free-carrier lifetime is a limiting factor in high-speed device applications. By using a simple and ultra-fast non-linear process such as FWM, operation at bit rates up to 40 Gb/s is demonstrated for both non-return to zero (NRZ) and return to zero (RZ) modulation formats. The dependence of successful gate operation in terms of microring structural parameters and operating conditions is investigated.