Compact photonic crystal circulator with flat-top transmission band created by cascading magneto-optical resonance cavities.

A new type of compact three-port circulator with flat-top transmission band (FTTB) in a two-dimensional photonic crystal has been proposed, through coupling the cascaded magneto-optical resonance cavities to waveguides. The coupled-mode theory is applied to investigate the coupled structure and analyze the condition to achieve FTTB. According to the theoretical analysis, the structure is further optimized to ensure that the condition for achieving FTTB can be satisfied for both cavity-cavity coupling and cavity-waveguide coupling. Through the finite-element method, it is demonstrated that the design can realize a high quality, nonreciprocal circulating propagation of waves with an insertion loss of 0.023 dB and an isolation of 23.3 dB, covering a wide range of operation frequency. Such a wideband circulator has potential applications in large-scale integrated photonic circuits for guiding or isolating harmful optical reflections from load elements.