Jun Liu

We investigated optical bistability and its temperature dependence in a composite system composed of an all-superconducting photonic crystal and graphene. The photonic crystal, constructed from two types of superconducting sheets, and which is temperature-sensitive and can greatly localize the electric field, alternately supports a defect mode in a cryogenic environment. Graphene is located at the strongest site in the electric field, so the third-order nonlinearity of graphene is enhanced tremendously, and, subsequently, low thresholds of optical bistability are achieved in the near-infrared region. The thresholds of optical bistability and the interval between the upper and lower thresholds decrease with the increase in environmental temperature, while the bistable thresholds increase with the addition of the incident wavelength. Furthermore, the critical threshold triggering optical bistability can be modulated by environment temperature and the periodic number of photonic crystals as well. The simulations may be found to be applicable for all temperature-sensitive optical switches or sensors in cryogenic environments.

We studied the optical fractal effect of the one-dimensional distributed feedback Bragg photonic crystals formed by semiconductor GaAs and dielectric TiO2. Light wave is transmitted in the intermediate dielectric slab and reflected back by the periodic photonic crystals at both ends, forming multiple fractal resonance output. The transmission channels expand exponentially by thickening the bulk in a cryogenic environment. The quality factor of each fractal resonant state improves with a greater periodic number of crystals. Furthermore, central wave of resonance has a blue-shift as the external pressure increases, while the influence of environment temperature on the fractal resonance could be ignored. It is hoped that our study can highlight the potential of these findings for designing multi-channel communication filters in cryogenic environments.