50-Gb/s Silicon Optical Modulator

Author

Thomson, David J. ; Gardes, Frederic Y. ; Fedeli, Jean-Marc ; Zlatanovic, Sanja ; Hu, Youfang ; Kuo, Bill Ping Piu ; Myslivets, Evgeny ; Alic, Nikola ; Radic, Stojan ; Mashanovich, Goran Z. ; Reed, Graham T.

Author_Institution

Adv. Technol. Inst., Univ. of Surrey, Guildford, UK

Volume

24

Issue

4

fYear

2012

Firstpage

234

Lastpage

236

Abstract

Optical modulators formed in silicon are the keystone to many low cost optical applications. Increasing the data rate of the modulator benefits the efficiency of channel usage and decreases power consumption per bit of data. Silicon-based modulators which operate via carrier depletion have to the present been demonstrated at data rates up to 40 Gb/s; however, here we present for the first time optical modulation at 50 Gb/s with a 3.1-dB extinction ratio obtained from carrier depletion based phase shifter incorporated in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. A corresponding optical insertion loss of approximately 7.4 dB is measured.

Keywords

Mach-Zehnder interferometers; electro-optical modulation; integrated optics; optical phase shifters; silicon; Mach-Zehnder interferometer; bit rate 50 Gbit/s; carrier depletion; channel usage; data rate; extinction ratio; optical insertion loss; phase shifter; power consumption; silicon optical modulator; Extinction ratio; High speed optical techniques; Optical device fabrication; Optical modulation; Optical waveguides; Silicon; High speed; Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI); optical modulator; silicon photonics;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2011.2177081

Filename

6086568