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We have investigated two novel concepts for the design of transmission lines in travelling wave Mach-Zehnder interferometer based Silicon Photonics depletion modulators overcoming the analog bandwidth limitations arising from cross-talk between signal lines in push-pull modulators and reducing the linear losses of the transmission lines. We experimentally validate the concepts and demonstrate an E/O -3 dBe bandwidth of 16 GHz with a 4V drive voltage (in dual drive configuration) and 8.8 dB on-chip insertion losses. Significant bandwidth improvements result from suppression of cross-talk. An additional bandwidth enhancement of ~11% results from a reduction of resistive transmission line losses. Frequency dependent loss models for loaded transmission lines and E/O bandwidth modeling are fully verified.

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We demonstrate a silicon photonic transmitter for soliton-based communications enabling the interleaving of QPSK and APSK modulated soliton pulses overlapping in both the time and frequency domains. The nonlinear Fourier transform is used to both determine adequate soliton launch conditions and facilitate nonlinear equalization at the receiver. A spectral efficiency of 0.5 b/s/Hz per polarization is reached over a 5400 km transmission distance and constitutes, to the best of our knowledge, a record for soliton transmission over such long distances. Linear and nonlinear minimum mean square error and artificial neural network-based equalizers are also experimentally benchmarked, with artificial neural networks resulting in particularly effective equalization in this system.