A 3D full-vectorial Beam Propagation Method is successfully applied to compute both the propagation constants and the modal profiles in high-contrast silica-air index-guiding Photonic Crystal Fibers. The approach is intrinsically suited to investigate longitudinally varying structures or propagation and polarization effects, which are of practical interest for advanced optical applications. As an example we model a dual-core coupler, showing that efficient polarization preserving coupling can be expected.

We show that a semiconductor nanocavity where the dominant nonlinear mechanism is the refractive index change induced by carriers generated through two-photon absorption can become unstable, exhibiting the onset of spontaneous oscillations (self-pulsing). The linear stability analysis, validated through numerical integration of a mean-field model, leads us to predict oscillations to take place typically in the 10-ps range at input power levels of the order of 15 mW.

In this paper we propose a novel hybrid optical plasmonic Vivaldi antenna for operation in the standard C telecommunication band for wavelengths in the 1550 nm range. The antenna is fed by a silicon waveguide and is designed to have high gain and large bandwidth. The shape of the radiation pattern, with a main lobe along the antenna axis, makes this antenna suitable for point-to-point connections for inter- or intra-chip optical communications. Direct port-to-port short links for different connection distances and in a homogeneous environment have also been simulated to verify, by comparing the results of a full-wave simulation with the Friis transmission equation, the correctness of the antenna parameters obtained via near-to-far field transformation.

We predict that the combination of space and time modulational instabilities that occur by means of parametric wave mixing in quadratic media leads to colored conical emission. This phenomenon should be observed under conditions usually employed in second-harmonic experiments.

We investigate the impact of a finite response time of Kerr nonlinearities over the onset of spontaneous oscillations (self-pulsing) occurring in a nanocavity. The complete characterization of the underlying Hopf bifurcation in the full parameter space allows us to show the existence of a critical value of the response time and to envisage different regimes of competition with bistability. The transition from a stable oscillatory state to chaos is found to occur only in cavities which are detuned far off-resonance, which turns out to be mutually exclusive with the region where the cavity can operate as a bistable switch.