Experiment and Theory of an Active Optical Filter

Author

MacFarlane, Duncan L. ; Christensen, Marc P. ; Nagdi, A.E. ; Evans, Gary A. ; Hunt, Louis R. ; Huntoon, Nathan ; Kim, Jiyoung ; Kim, Tae W. ; Kirk, Jay ; LaFave, Tim P., Jr. ; Liu, Ke ; Ramakrishna, Viswanath ; Dabkowski, Mieczyslaw ; Sultana, Nahid

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Univ. of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA

Volume

48

Issue

3

fYear

2012

fDate

3/1/2012 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

307

Lastpage

317

Abstract

The role of gain in an optical filter is advanced by good agreement between theory and experiment presented herein. The particular integrated photonic filter is composed of four semiconductor optical amplifiers and one four-port coupler located at the intersection of the amplifiers. The four-port coupler is realized using frustrated total internal reflection off a very thin slab of alumina embedded in the substrate. The delta function response of the filter is measured using an ultra-fast laser and cross-correlator, and the measured transfer functions agree well with a z-transform-based description of the device.

Keywords

alumina; integrated optics; light reflection; measurement by laser beam; optical correlation; optical couplers; optical filters; optical transfer function; semiconductor optical amplifiers; Al₂O₃; active optical filter; cross-correlator; delta function response; four-port coupler; frustrated total internal reflection; integrated photonic filter; semiconductor optical amplifiers; thin slab; transfer functions; ultrafast laser; z-transform-based method; Active filters; Couplers; Filtering theory; Nanophotonics; Optical fibers; Optical filters; Nanophotonics; photonic filter; semiconductor optical amplifiers;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9197

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JQE.2011.2174615

Filename

6069520