The dynamical properties of an InP photonic crystal nanocavity are experimentally investigated using pump-probe techniques and compared to simulations based on coupled-mode theory. Excellent agreement between experimental results and simulations is obtained when employing a rate equation model containing three time constants, that we interpret as the effects of fast carrier diffusion from an initially localized carrier distribution and the slower effects of surface recombination and bulk recombination. The variation of the time constants with parameters characterizing the nanocavity structure is investigated. The model is further extended to evaluate the importance of the fast and slow carrier relaxation processes in relation to patterning effects in the device, as exemplified by the case of all-optical wavelength conversion.

We report the design and fabrication of a four-port InP photonic crystal cavity-waveguide structure in which two crossing waveguides intersect in a cavity. Transmission measurements show that by exploiting mode-gap effects, high cross-talk suppression between the two waveguides can be obtained. In addition, the waveguides couple to two distinct cavity resonances with different quality-factors as well as small mode volumes. This structure is promising for realizing ultra-fast, low-energy optical switches or memories.

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Wavelength conversion of a 10-Gb/s (9.35 Gb/s net rate) return-to-zero ON-OFF keying signal is demonstrated using a simple InP photonic crystal H0 nanocavity with Lorentzian line shape. The shifting of the resonance induced by the generation of free-carriers enables the pump intensity modulation to be transferred to a continuous-wave probe with a sufficiently high quality so that the converted signal can be detected with a conventional telecommunication receiver. A clear eye diagram is observed for the converted signal showing a pre-forward error correction bit-error-ratio down to 10 −3 .