An Ultrafast with High Contrast Ratio 1×2 All-optical Switch based on Tri-arm Mach-Zehnder employing All-optical Flip-flop

This paper introduces a novel 1×2 all-optical switch based on Tri-arm Mach-Zehnder (TaMZ) that uses an all-optical flip-flop (AOFF). The proposed switch is analytically modeled and simulation shows a marked improvement in signal on/off contrast ratio (CR) between two outputs over a larger range of control signal power compared to the existing symmetric Mach- Zehnder (SMZ) switches. In addition, TaMZ switch offers both broadcasting and complete switch-off capability, which further enhances the flexibility of the optical switching applications. The paper presents the principle of TaMZ-based switch and investigates the CR performance. It is shown that the CR improvement is more than 10 dB compared to conventional SMZ switch in a control signal power range of 20 dB.