A novel mode selecting switch (MSS) is experimentally demonstrated for on-chip mode-division multiplexing (MDM) optical interconnects. The MSS consists of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with tapered multi-mode interference couplers and TiN thermo-optic phase shifters for conversion and switching between the optical data encoded on the fundamental and first-order quasi-transverse electric (TE) modes. The C-band MSS exhibits a >25  dB switching extinction ratio and < -12 dB crosstalk. We validate the dynamic switching with a 25.8 kHz gating signal measuring switching times for both TE0 and TE1 modes of <10.9  μs. All channels exhibit less than 1.7 dB power penalty at a 10 bit error rate, while switching the non-return-to-zero PRBS-31 data signals at 10  Gb/s.

We propose and numerically validate a new design concept for on-chip optical pulse shaping based on discrete space-to-time mapping in cascaded co-directional couplers. We show that under weak-coupling conditions, the amplitude and phase of the discrete complex apodization profile of the device can be directly mapped into its temporal impulse response. In this scheme, the amplitude and phase of the apodization profile can be controlled by tuning the coupling strength and relative time delay between the couplers, respectively. The proposed concept enables direct synthesis of the target temporal waveforms over a very broad range of time-resolution, from the femtosecond to the sub-nanosecond regime, using readily feasible integrated waveguide technologies. Moreover, the device offers compactness and the potential for reconfigurability.

We propose and numerically demonstrate a new design concept for implementing nondispersive complementary (band-pass/band-reject) optical filters with a wide range of bandwidth tunability. The device consists of two photonic Hilbert transformers (PHTs) incorporated into a Michelson interferometer (MI). By controlling the central frequency of PHTs with respect to each other, both the central frequency and the spectral width of the rejection/pass bands of the filter are proved to be tunable. Bandwidth tuning from 260 MHz to 60 GHz is numerically demonstrated using two readily feasible fiber Bragg grating-based PHTs. The designed filter offers a high extinction ratio between the pass band and rejection band (>20  dB in the narrow-band filtering case) with a very sharp transition with a slope of 170  dB/GHz from rejection to pass band.

We experimentally demonstrate on-chip optical pulse shaping based on discrete space-to-time mapping in cascaded co-directional couplers. The demonstrated shapers validate a recent design methodology that exploits the direct relationship between the discrete complex spatial apodization profile of a structure of cascaded couplers and the time-domain impulse response of the device. In this design, the amplitude and phase of the apodization profile can be controlled through the coupling strength of each coupler and the relative time delay between the waveguides connecting consecutive couplers, respectively. This design methodology has been successfully used to demonstrate direct synthesis of high-quality flat-top and phase-coded pulse trains with resolutions down to the sub-picosecond range using passive devices in a silicon-on-insulator platform.

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