Exploiting Discreteness for Switching in Waveguide Arrays
O. Bang and P. D. Miller
Australian Photonics Cooperative Research Centre
Optical Sciences Centre
Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering
The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200 Australia
Abstract:
A new approach to multiport switching in arrays of nonlinear waveguides is proposed. While other schemes have relied on suppressing the inherent transverse discreteness, this approach takes advantage of this feature of the array. One of the effects of discreteness is to keep intense beams trapped in a single waveguide for the length of the array. Switching may be achieved by using a controlled perturbation to displace such a trapped beam in the transverse direction. This displacement is quantized to an integer number of waveguides, thus allowing unambiguous selection of the output channel.