Unidirectional Transmission in Asymmetrically Confined Photonic Crystal Defects with Kerr Nonlinearity

We investigate the unidirectional transmission behaviour of an asymmetrically confined photonic crystal (PC) defect with Kerr nonlinearity. Basically, the unidirectional transmission originates from the strong dependence of the threshold input power for the sharp increase of transmission on the launch direction of the input wave. This can be well explained in the framework of the coupled mode theory. Our theoretical analysis reveals the existence of an upper limit for the transmission contrast when such a single PC defect is employed. This is supported by the simulation results based on the nonlinear finite-difference time-domain technique.