Half-wavelength pitch waveguide superlattice for high-density photonic integration and space-division multiplexing

Abstract

Silicon photonics can potentially transform the photonics technology owing to its low-cost fabrication and large-scale integration advantages. To this end, integration density will be the key factors for its future development. This talk will review our work on high-density waveguide integration based on waveguide superlattices. Half-wavelength pitch waveguide arrays with very low crosstalk have been demonstrated experimentally. The design principles of such waveguide arrays and the potential impact on high-density photonics integration will be discussed. We will show how physics insight can be employed to overcome some crucial limitations of integrated photonics. The applications of our work in space-division multiplexing, mode-division multiplexing, wavelength-division multiplexing, optical phased arrays, and spatial light modulators will be discussed. Further opportunities in optical interconnects and optical information processing will be presented.