Abstract

Switches are essential components in several optical applications, in which reduced footprints are highly desirable for mass production of densely integrated circuits at low cost. However, most conventional solutions rely on making long switching structures, thus increasing the final device size. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate an ultra-compact 2x2 optical switch based on slow-light-enhanced bimodal interferometry in one-dimensional silicon photonic crystals. By properly designing the band structure, the device exhibits a large group index contrast between the fundamental even mode and a higher order odd mode for TE polarization. Thereby, highly dispersive and broadband bimodal regions for high-performance operation are engineered by exploiting the different symmetry of the modes. Two configurations are considered in the experiments to analyze the dimensions influence on the switching efficiency. As a result, a photonic switch based on a bimodal single-channel interferometer with a footprint of only 63 μm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> , a power consumption of 19.5 mW and a crosstalk of 15 dB is demonstrated for thermo-optic tunability.

Highlights

  • S WITCHES play a prominent role in current communication networks to address the ever-growing increase in the data centers traffic [1]

  • We have demonstrated an ultra-compact electrooptical 2x2 switch based on a slow-light-enhanced bimodal waveguide and driven by the thermo-optic effect in silicon

  • Two different designs have been considered to show the trade-off between the group index contrast and the insertion losses

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

PhCs allow to drastically reduce the group velocity of the propagating mode, the so-called slow light phenomenon, increasing the optical length interaction while the physical length remains small [18]–[20] This effect is exploited, for instance, to develop 2D hole patterned array PhC structures for all-optical switching based on high speed MZIs [21], or for thermo-optic effects in high-performance MMIs [22] and ultra-compact directional couplers of less than 100 μm footprint [23], [24]. Bimodal 1D PhC waveguides working in the slow light regime have been designed as ultra-compact modulators with footprints of only 100 μm2 [37] In these last structures, the operation is based on the interference between two modes of the same polarization and parity in a single-channel silicon structure, with a large group velocity difference and without the need of additional structures or other materials. Our design encompasses the benefits from 1D PhCs and bimodal waveguides, to validate this type of structures for optical switching with extremely reduced footprints

CONCEPT AND DESIGN
FABRICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THE CHIP
EXPERIMENTAL DEMONSTRATION
CONCLUSION
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