On-chip optical pulse shaper and its application in arbitrary waveform generation

With the rapid development of silicon photonics, chip-integrated optical pulse shaper is highly desirable rather than bulk optical pulse shaper. In this paper, we review our recent progresses of on-chip optical pulse shaper and its applications in arbitrary waveform generation. First, we design and demonstrate a silicon on insulator (SOI) on-chip optical pulse shaper based on four-tap finite impulse response. The pulse shaper is programmable thanks to amplitude and phase modulation of each tap controlled by thermal heaters. We further demonstrate the tunability of the filter central wavelength, bandwidth and variable passband shape. Second, we will demonstrate the applications of arbitrary waveform generator and order-tunable optical differentiator based on such an optical pulse shaper. Third, special optical pulse shapers based on opto-mechanical structure and on-chip large dispersion module are also discussed.