Optical bistability in nonlinear periodic structures : from bragg gratings to photonic crystal

99 p.In the era of advanced communications technology, the demand for bandwidth is ever increasing due to the larger number of users and the expectation for a better Quality of Services (QoS). In present communications network, optical signal still have to experience electronic conversion for processing as it propagates from the transmitter to the receiver. The conversion to electrical signal introduces speed bottleneck, and therefore results in low QoS from user's point of view. To overcome bottleneck of bandwidth requirements, the signal is expected to remain in optical domain as it propagates from transmitter to receiver without experiencing conversion to electrical domain. Consequently, there is a need to do signal processing purely in optical domain to enable all-optical technology.DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (EEE