Opt Quant Electron (2012) 44:27–34 DOI 10.1007/s11082-011-9527-y Design and simulation of an all-optical photonic crystal AND gate using nonlinear Kerr effect Mohammad Danaie · Hassan Kaatuzian Received: 26 June 2011 / Accepted: 13 December 2011 / Published online: 22 December 2011 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2011 Abstract A photonic crystal optical limiter with a sharp input-output characteristic curve is initially designed in this paper. Thereafter; using an optimized Y-junction, a new topology for an all-optical photonic crystal AND gate is proposed. The mentioned gate has a transition time less than 1 ps, a delay time less than 0.4 ps and occupies an area less than 100 μm 2 . The 1,550nm input lasers should have a power equal to 10W to be able to trigger the switching mechanism. The photonic crystal used for this purpose is a two dimensional triangular lattice of holes in a GaAs substrate. PWE and FDTD methods are used to simulate the proposed structure. Time domain simulations confirm the switching mechanism of the proposed AND gate. Keywords Photonic crystal · Logic gate · Kerr effect · AND gate · Optical bistability 1 Introduction Photonic crystals (PCs) are periodic dielectric or magnetic structures which under cer- tain conditions prohibit the propagation of electromagnetic waves within certain frequency bands. This phenomenon provides the ability of guiding and manipulating the flow of light (Joannopoulos et al. 1995; Noda and Baba 2003). Mathematically speaking, PCs can be periodic in one, two or three dimensions. Since the fabrication process of 2D PCs is quite compatible with the manufacturing process of electronic integrated circuits, it has received more attention than 3D PCs. A 2D PC structure can have a photonic bandgap for TE, TM or both modes. Usually, in cases where GaAs substrate is used, a triangular lattice of dielectric holes with a radius of 0.3a where ‘a” is the lattice constant, is utilized for TE modes and M. Danaie · H. Kaatuzian (B ) Photonics Research Laboratory, Electrical Engineering Department, Amirkabir University of Technology, Hafez Ave., Tehran, Iran e-mail: hsnkato@aut.ac.ir M. Danaie e-mail: danaie@aut.ac.ir 123