Abstract
We propose a design for silicon-on-chip integrated eight-channel wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) demultiplexer, which consists of parallel-arrayed one-dimensional (1-D) photonic crystal nanobeam cavities (PCNCs) with high-Q over 105 and large free spectral range of ∼200 nm. To the best of our knowledge, this is for the first time that a 1-D PCNC-based demultiplexer is presented. The performance of the device is investigated theoretically by using three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain method. To enable eight-channel parallel arrayed 1-D PCNCs to be coupled to on-chip optical networks for higher integration and multiplex application, an 1 × 8 taper-type equal optical power splitter is used to connect all channels simultaneously. The total device footprint is as small as 12 μm × 15 μm (width × length), which is decreased by five times compared to that per channel in the recent two-dimensional (2-D) PC-based demultiplexer. Moreover, the average channel spacing smaller than 115 GHz is achieved, which is more than two times smaller than that of 2-D PC nanocavity devices, demonstrating that the arrayed nanocavities have the potential for developing ultracompact 100-GHz spaced filters in a dense WDM system. Thus, we believe that the results demonstrated in this work is promising for the future on-chip photonics integrated circuits and optical communication systems.
Highlights
Over the past decades, with the increasing demand for bandwidth, it has become a significant trend to develop optics communication systems for large-capacity and high-efficiency data transmission
To achieve an ultracompact Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) demultiplexer with much smaller footprint, a method for the dense integration of ultracompact 1-D photonic crystals (PC) nanobeam cavities (PCNCs)-based WDM demultiplexer is proposed on a monolithic silicon chip
We find that the performance of the proposed WDM device based on parallel arrayed 1-D PCNC units are greatly improved compared with other siliconbased WDM devices
Summary
With the increasing demand for bandwidth, it has become a significant trend to develop optics communication systems for large-capacity and high-efficiency data transmission. When the cavity length lc 1⁄4 500 nm, the cavity FSR as large as 197 nm can be achieved, which is significantly increased compared to previous design,[40] indicating that a wide enough bandwidth is provided to design a WDM demultiplexer with as many channels as possible. Of a single 1-D PCNC unit is ultracompact as small as ∼3 μm2 [with lc 1⁄4 500 nm, Nm 1⁄4 5, and Nt 1⁄4 4 shown in Fig. 1(b)], which is decreased more than one order of magnitude compared with previous designs based on 2-D PC nanocavities (∼100 μm2).[21,24] the proposed parallelarrayed 1-D PCNC units with high Q, large FSR, and ultrasmall footprint is potentially a promising platform for high-density integrated dense WDM design and on-chip integrated WDM optical communication systems.
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