Abstract
In this work, a novel highly fabrication tolerant polarization beam splitter (PBS) is presented on an InP platform. To achieve the splitting, we combine the Pockels effect and the plasma dispersion effect in a symmetric 1x2 Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). One p-i-n phase shifter of the MZI is driven in forward bias to exploit the plasma dispersion effect and modify the phase of both the TE and TM mode. The other arm of the MZI is driven in reverse bias to exploit the Pockels effect which affects only the TE mode. By adjusting the voltages of the two phase shifters, a different interference condition can be set for the TE and the TM modes thereby splitting them at the output of the MZI. By adjusting the voltages, the very tight fabrication tolerances known for fully passive PBS are eased. The experimental results show that an extinction ratio better than 15 dB and an on-chip loss of 3.5 dB over the full C-band (1530-1565nm) are achieved.
Highlights
Due to the increasing internet traffic, there is a need for upgrading current optical networks
One of the major fabrication issues for the polarization beam splitter (PBS) in both Si and indium phosphide (InP) is that they have stringent fabrication tolerances in order to produce a high extinction ratio
As an alternative way to realize a PBS, we propose to combine the use of the plasma dispersion effect and the Pockels effect in a p-i-n structure with a bulk intrinsic region
Summary
Due to the increasing internet traffic, there is a need for upgrading current optical networks. As an alternative way to realize a PBS, we propose to combine the use of the plasma dispersion effect and the Pockels effect in a p-i-n structure with a bulk intrinsic region. With this approach, we do not need to place two phase shifters perpendicular to one another and need less space on the wafer. The experimental results show a polarization extinction ratio better than 15 dB over the entire C-band can be obtained with an on-chip loss of around 3.5 dB Such a device provides an easy adjustment in just two steps which consist of setting two different voltage to produce the splitting function. By adjusting the voltages in forward and reverse bias, fabrication errors can be overcome
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