Low-current optical switching by carrier-injection-induced reconfigurable waveguiding

Abstract

Progress in optical switching technology currently faces several major obstacles. One of these is high power consumption, which quickly multiplies in cascaded switch configurations. As well, many implementations have long switching speeds and large footprints. An improved compact 1x2 digital optical switch (DOS) in InGaAsP/InP is presented, with experimental results compared to numerical modeling. The Y-junction waveguide switch operation is based on reconfiguration of output waveguide arms by carrier injection at the electrodes. We present experimental results of DOS fabricated with InGaAsP cores having bandgaps of 1.2um, 1.3um, and 1.4um. The results are compared with calculations of refractive index change versus carrier concentration in the different InGaAsP alloys. Additionally, wafer layer structure and waveguide parameters were redesigned to decrease, respectively, power dissipation and optical confinement. Switching current is significantly reduced from greater than 100 mA to about 20 mA, which not only provides power savings, but also results in less thermal overshoot in the switched optical pulse. The DOS has a measured switching contrast ratio of better than 12.5 dB, with a transition time of less than 5ns. Polarization dependence of switching contrast is also explored.