Experimental Realization of Topologically-Protected All-Optical Logic Gates Based on Silicon Photonic Crystal Slabs

As the field of topological photonics has developed over the past 10 years, it has been proven that the combination of topology and photons is very beneficial to the design of robust optical devices against some disturbances. However, most of the work on robust optical logic devices stays at the theoretical level. There are very few topologically-protected logic devices fabricated in experiments. Here, the experimental fabrication of a series of topologically-protected all-optical logic gates is reported. Seven topologically-protected all-optical logic gates (OR, XOR, NOT, XNOR, NAND, NOR, and AND) are fabricated on silicon photonic platforms, which show strong robustness even if some disorders exist. These robust logic devices are potentially applicable in future optical signal processing and computing applications.