Bistability engineering in ring-coupled Mach-Zehnder interferometers for efficient all-optical switching

Author

Darmawan, S. ; Landobasa, Y.M. ; Chin, M.K.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. & Electron. Eng., Nanyang Technol. Univ., Singapore

fYear

2008

fDate

8-11 Dec. 2008

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

We propose a two-ring structure that can generate an ultra-narrow resonance which may be used, together with the Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI), to engineer bistability switching with low switching threshold and reasonably high extinction ratio (ER) and modulation depth (MD). The two-ring MZI (2RMZI) is also compared with the conventional one-ring MZI (1RMZI). A flexible optimization scheme has been developed and can be used to obtain maximum ER and MD. Complementary relationship between switching threshold, sensitivity to loss and optical bandwidth are discussed for the two types of devices.

Keywords

Mach-Zehnder interferometers; optical bistability; optical resonators; optical switches; all-optical switching; bistability switching; extinction ratio; flexible optimization scheme; modulation depth; optical bandwidth; ring-coupled Mach-Zehnder interferometers; two-ring structure; ultra-narrow resonance; Bandwidth; Erbium; Extinction ratio; Optical bistability; Optical devices; Optical interferometry; Optical losses; Optical modulation; Optical sensors; Resonance; All-optical switching; Bistability; Fano-resonance; Guided waves optics; Integrated Optic Devices; Kerr nonlinearity; Mach-Zehnder; Ring resonators;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

PhotonicsGlobal@Singapore, 2008. IPGC 2008. IEEE

Conference_Location

Singapore

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-3901-0

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-2906-6

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IPGC.2008.4781304

Filename

4781304