Abstract
An area efficient novel optical modulator with low operation voltage is designed based on integrated Mach-Zehnder Interferometer with a photonic crystal slab structure as the phase shifter. Plasma dispersion effect is utilized so that photonic band-to-band transition occurs at the operating frequency leading to a high index change (Δn = ~4) for π-phase shift on the modulator. This approach reduces the phase shifter length to a few micrometers (~5 µm) in a silicon on insulator platform and operating voltage required is around 1 V. Low voltage together with short optical interaction length decrease optical losses and power consumption during modulation process providing a great opportunity for size and system cost optimization.
Highlights
The primary purpose of an optical modulator is to modulate the optical signal by altering the characteristics of the light beam such as amplitude, phase or polarization
In order to use a photonic crystal (PhC) as a phase shifter, PhC on one arm is sandwiched between p-type and n-type doped region
The change in silicon index is utilized to shift the photonic band structure of the PhC and the transition from one band to another band is obtained at the operating frequency
Summary
The primary purpose of an optical modulator is to modulate the optical signal by altering the characteristics of the light beam such as amplitude, phase or polarization. A large number of studies on MZI based modulators have been performed with phase shifter structures composed of traditional pn, p-i-n diodes or MOS structures and as a consequence, high operation speeds up to 50 Gb/s were obtained[17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27]. Length of the phase shifter was reduced to 80 μm for 1 Gb/s operation speed with 2 V on-state voltage[28] Beside their advantages such as high speed, wide working spectrum and low temperature sensitivity, MZI-based modulators have several major drawbacks such as their demand for long interaction length, which results in high insertion loss and occupation of large area and large power consumption. Such a narrow linewidth demand is a critical specification in terms of the system cost
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