Optical isolation via one-dimensional magneto-photonic crystals containing nonlinear defect layer

In this paper we investigate the transmission properties of one-dimensional periodic structures containing magneto-optical (MO) material layers with a nonlinear defect layer using the transfer matrix method. It is shown that such structures can exhibit unidirectional resonant photon tunneling phenomena which can discriminate between circularly polarized (CP) wave of given handedness impinging from the same direction for specific incident field intensity. These structures may be utilized to design intensity dependent optical isolator for CP waves. Also it is demonstrated that the threshold intensity to achieve optical bistability depends on the bias magnetic field.