Comprehensive analysis method of nonlinear optical wave-guiding phenomena by 3-dimensional nonlinear FDTD parallel computation

This study aims to establish a comprehensive numerical method of understanding the complicated optical wave propagation in nonlinear media and waveguide devices. Particular themes of this research project are 1; finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) analysis of enhanced four-wave mixing in a semiconductor micro-ring resonator, and optimization of the resonator configuration in order to improve the optical wavelength conversion efficiency, and 2; FDTD analysis and design optimization of optical bi-stable waveguide devices for the reduction of their switching threshold power. These devices are prospective candidates for the realization of efficient wavelength conversion and all-optical integrated logic circuits in high-speed optical communication technology, and are recently very actively investigated. In 1, by taking into the FDTD analysis both the dispersion effects of semiconductor material and those of particular waveguide configuration, thereby matching the wavelength of the pump, signal, and converted light waves with the resonances of the ring resonator, the performance of the wavelength conversion device has been shown to be improved. In 2, the FDTD analysis has been applied to optimize the waveguide structure in order to realize effective low switching-threshold bi-stable devices; it has been shown that the switching threshold has been reduced to the power level of currently available semiconductor lasers.