Slow and fast light effects in semiconductor waveguides for applications in microwave photonics

Abstract

We review the theory of slow and fast light effects due to coherent population oscillations in semiconductor waveguides, and potential applications of these effects in microwave photonic systems as RF phase shifters. In order to satisfy the application requirement of 360° RF phase shift at different microwave or millimeter-wave frequency bands, we present several schemes to increase the achievable RF phase shift by enhancing light slow-down or speed-up. These schemes include integrating gain and absorption sections, optical filtering and the exploitation of the initial chirp effects. As a real application in microwave photonics, a widely tunable microwave photonic notch filter with 100% fractional tuning range is also proposed and demonstrated.