Photonic Applications Using Electrooptic Optical Signal Processors
Abstract
During the contract new designs of electrooptic signal processors were made from nonlinear optical polymers. These systems were based upon the latest lowest loss polymers available and involved a novel system of serial modules. The first implementation of these devices included ring resonators [1], analog-to-digital conversion [2] and single sideband optical links [3]. These are discussed in the paper [4] by Seo on Optical Signal Processor using electrooptic waveguides. One of the major demonstrations of this OSP approaches was the linear and parallel cascading of devices to improve modulation linearity and SFDR. The design was published [5] fabricated and tested [6]. The testing showed that significant improvement could be obtained by these techniques but that the material did not have the required electrooptic capabilities and transmission to make many cascaded sections. The next step was to try to increase the electrooptic coefficient using laser alignment techniques. This was effective in increasing the number of aligned chromophores and improving performance. The paper [7] on this however showed that the material still was not sufficiently active, relative to its transmission, in our OSP applications. Therefore we moved on to newer InP based semiconductors using Quantum Dots. In this case the nonlinear electrooptic properties come from the Quantum Confined Stark effect and can be tailored to our specific wavelengths and use. The key elements including the MMIs, resonant rings, and multilevel structures that we designed for the Polymer systems can all be transferred directly to the InP devices. We have made and reported the first of these InP modulation devices[8] and find that they have impressive high frequency performance. In an effort to further improve the OSP systems we have recently looked at coupled Quantum Dots which significantly increase the electrooptic performance.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 16, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA563402
Entities
People
- Harold R. Fetterman
Organizations
- University of California