Modeling of on-chip optical nonreciprocity with an active microcavity

Abstract

On-chip nonreciprocal light transport holds a great impact on optical information processing and communications based upon integrated photonic devices. By harvesting gain-saturation nonlinearity, we recently demonstrated on-chip optical asymmetric transmission at telecommunication bands with superior nonreciprocal performances using only one active whispering-gallery-mode microtoroid resonator, beyond the commonly adopted magneto-optical (Faraday) effect. Here, detailed theoretical analysis is presented with respect to the reported scheme. Despite the fact that our model is simply the standard coupled-mode theory, it agrees well with the experiment and describes the essential one-way light transport in this nonreciprocal device. Further discussions, including the connection with the second law of thermodynamics and Fano resonance, are also briefly made in the end.