Silicon-integrated high-speed mode and polarization switch-and-selector

Abstract

On-chip optical communications are growingly aiming at multimode operation together with mode-division multiplexing to further increase the transmission capacity. Optical switches, which are capable of optical signals switching at the nodes, play a key role in optical networks. We demonstrate a 2 × 2 electro-optic Mach–Zehnder interferometer-based mode- and polarization-selective switch fabricated by standard complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor process. An electro optic tuner based on a PN-doped junction in one of the Mach–Zehnder interferometer arms enables dynamic switching in 11 ns. For all the channels, the overall insertion losses and inter-modal crosstalk values are below 9.03 and –15.86 dB at 1550 nm, respectively.