Novel spectral-shaping building block: a narrowband Mach–Zehnder interferometer

Abstract

We present an experimental demonstration of notch filters with arbitrary center wavelengths capable of tunable analog output power values varying between full extinction of 15 and 0 dB. Each filter is composed of highly modular apodized four-port Bragg add/drop filters to reduce the crosstalk between concatenated devices. The constructed photonic integrated circuit experimentally demonstrates spectra shaping using four independent notch filters. Each notch filter supports a bandwidth of ∼ 2 nm and is shown to be suitable for realization of programmable photonic integrated circuits.