The Dawn of Photonic Crystals: An Avenue for Optical Computing

In this chapter, a new paradigm is developed for optical computation using photonic crystals. As photonic crystals are the most sophisticated optical materials to date, information processing using this structure is one of the most sought-after technologies in photonics. While the semiconductor industry is striving hard to increase the microprocessors’ processing power, it is certain that the trend would not last forever as against Moore’s prediction. At this juncture, photonics technologies have to compete with the upcoming quantum computing technology to emerge as a promising successor for semiconductor microprocessors. This chapter is devoted to the introduction of photonic crystals as the workhorse for an all-optical computational system with a myriad of logic gates, memory units, and networks which can be constructed using these structures.