Abstract
Particle detectors for future experiments at the HL-LHC will require new optical data transmitters that can provide high data rates and be resistant against high levels of radiation. Furthermore, new design paths for future optical readout systems for HL-LHC could be opened if there was a possibility to integrate the optical components with their driving electronics and possibly also the silicon particle sensors themselves. All these functionalities could potentially be combined in the silicon photonics technology which currently receives a lot of attention for conventional optical link systems. Silicon photonic test chips were designed in order to assess the suitability of this technology for deployment in high-energy physics experiments. The chips contain custom-designed Mach-Zehnder modulators, pre-designed ``building-block'' modulators, photodiodes and various other passive test structures. The simulation and design flow of the custom designed Mach-Zehnder modulators and some first measurement results of the chips are presented.
Highlights
The phase of the light traveling through such a silicon waveguide can be altered by changing the refractive index n of the waveguide’s material
The foundries offer pre-designed devices, so called building blocks, that can be used to create more complex photonic circuits without the need to design every single component from scratch
The Synopsys Sentaurus TCAD software [21] was used to simulate the electrical properties of the pn-junctions in silicon under bias
Summary
An MZM is a interferometric modulator that is used for conversion of data streams from the electrical to the optical domain. Incoming light is split into two separate modulation arms and an optical path length difference is introduced between them Depending on this path length difference, both light beams accumulate different phases until they reach the combiner as shown in figure 1. This phase difference produces either constructive or destructive interference at the MZM output. The phase of the light traveling through such a silicon waveguide can be altered by changing the refractive index n of the waveguide’s material. Due to the change of the refractive index of silicon, the mode guided in this waveguide will change its effective refractive index neff This change ∆neff translates into a phase shift of. The better the overlap between optical mode and depletion zone [17], the higher the phase shift in a modulator arm for a given voltage change ∆V and phase shifter length and the more efficient the phase shifter design
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