A circuit for the management of any arbitrary polarization state of light is demonstrated on an integrated silicon (Si) photonics platform. This circuit allows us to adapt any polarization into the standard fundamental TE mode of a Si waveguide and, conversely, to control the polarization and set it to any arbitrary polarization state. In addition, the integrated thermal tuning allows kilohertz speed which can be used to perform a polarization scrambler. The circuit was used in a WDM link and successfully used to adapt four channels into a standard Si photonic integrated circuit.

We report on an experimental prototype of a low-cost silicon photonic reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM). The device is able to operate with up to 12 wavelength division multiplexing channels. In order to control the polarization of the multi-wavelength signal at the input of the device, an integrated polarization controller is investigated as an alternative to the polarization diversity device architecture. The integrated ROADM is equipped with optical switches for the selection of the path direction and variable optical attenuators for optical power control. We demonstrate the polarization insensitive routing of 10 Gb/s channels between two ROADM nodes with error-free transmission.

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Grating couplers, widely used in Silicon Photonics (SiPho) for fibre-chip coupling are polarisation sensitive components, consequently any polarisation fluctuation from the fibre optical link results in spurious intensity swings. A polarisation management componentis analytically considered, coupled with a geometrical representation based on phasors and Poincaré sphere, generalising and simplifying the treatment and understanding of its functionalities. A specific implementation in SOI is shown both as polarisation compensator and polarisation controller, focusing on the operative principle. Finally, it is demonstrated experimentally that this component can be used as an integrated polarimeter.

A photonic integrated circuit capable of recombining any incoming state of polarization into a single TE Silicon waveguide was demonstrated, allowing optical communication systems to be transparent to polarization issues. Index Terms -polarization independent circuit, polarization controller, Si photonic integrated circuits. Si PICs SOP MZI PRCC TPS Ge PPM 2DGC MMI MPW MMI's PDK SMF 72 4:30 AM -4:45 AM THD2 (Contributed) 978-1-5090-1903-8/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE