High-Contrast Modulation of Asymmetric Fabry-Perot Modulators at 20 GHz

Abstract

Since their introduction in 1989 [1,2], asymmetric Fabry-Perot modulators (AFPMs) have attracted a great deal of attention because of their high efficiency (high contrast, low insertion loss, and low voltage) and the fact that their surface-normal configuration is particularly compatible with fiber optics and with proposed architectures for parallel optical free-space image processors and interconnection systems. In addition to their other virtues, AFPMs also have the potential for extremely high speed operation. Last year we demonstrated small-signal modulation of AFPMs to 21 GHz [3], and recently we have predicted that speeds in excess of 40 GHz may well be possible. [4] This capacity for high speed operation makes AFPMs suitable for high-speed photonic switching applications in which the optical switches are "smart" — that is, they perform functions on the data stream at the data rate, rather than simply switching packets at some slower rate.