Broadband, temperature tolerant and passively biased resonantly enhanced Mach-Zehnder modulators

Romero-García, Sebastián; Moscoso-Mártir, Alvaro; Nojić, Jovana; Sharif-Azadeh, S.; Müller, Juliana; Shen, Bin; Merget, Florian; Witzens, Jeremy

doi:10.1109/nems.2018.8580438

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…These relax the alignment tolerances by about a factor 3 in one direction compared to standard single mode coupling devices, at the price of requiring two on-chip output waveguides over which the power is equally split. This makes them ideal for applications such as parallel single mode transmitters [12] or passively biased Mach-Zehnder modulators [14], [15], but also tunable back-reflectors as required for ECLs and implemented by forming a Sagnac loop. First results for an ECL using silicon alignment tolerant grating couplers were reported in [16], but this device still required a pair of ball lenses assembled together with the RSOA over the chip in a cumbersome assembly.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Silicon Nitride External Cavity Laser With Alignment Tolerant Multi-Mode RSOA-to-PIC Interface

Ghannam

Shen

Merget

et al. 2022

IEEE J. Select. Topics Quantum Electron.

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We demonstrate an external cavity laser formed by combining a silicon nitride photonic integrated circuit with a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier. The laser uses an alignment tolerant edge coupler formed by a multi-mode waveguide splitter right at the edge of the silicon nitride chip that relaxes the required alignment to the III-V gain chip and equally splits the power among its two output waveguides. Both the ground and first order mode are excited in the coupler and reach the quadrature condition at the waveguide junction, ensuring equal power to be coupled to both. Two high-quality-factor ring resonators arranged in Vernier configuration close a Sagnac loop between the two waveguides. In addition to wideband frequency tuning, they result in a longer effective cavity length. The alignment tolerant coupler increases the alignment tolerance in the two directions parallel to the chip surface by a factor 3 relative to conventional edge couplers, making it ideal for gain chip integration via pick-and-place technology. Lasing is maintained in a misalignment range of ±6 µm in the direction along the edge of the chip. A Lorentzian laser linewidth of 39 kHz is achieved.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Silicon Nitride External Cavity Laser With Alignment Tolerant Multi-Mode RSOA-to-PIC Interface

Ghannam

Shen

Merget

et al. 2022

IEEE J. Select. Topics Quantum Electron.

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“…In contrast, TW-MZMs, despite having a higher RF power consumption, are much easier to bias, thanks to their high optical bandwidth. To mitigate these limitations of resonantly enhanced devices, many efforts have been made in recent years to develop novel modulator configurations such as ring assisted Mach-Zehnder modulators (RA-MZMs) with spoiled quality factors [10] as well as slow light photonic crystal (PC) MZM configurations [11], aiming at resonant or slow light enhancement while keeping the optical bandwidth at a moderately high level (3-5 nm) to remove the need for or facilitate active control. Unlike TW-MZMs, such devices have relatively small phase shifter lengths and behave as LE phase shifters, which allows for operation without an RF termination, and thus further reduction of the power consumption.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Power-efficient lumped-element meandered silicon Mach-Zehnder modulators

Azadeh

Nojić

Moscoso-Mártir

et al. 2020

Silicon Photonics XV

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Driving electro-optic modulators in lumped-element (LE) configuration allows for small footprint, reduced power consumption, and improved high-speed performance. The main shortcoming of conventional rectilinear LE modulators are the required high drive-voltages, resulting from their shortened phase-shifters. To address this, we introduce a Mach-Zehnder modulator with meandered phase shifters (M-MZM), which can be driven in LE configuration, while keeping the optical phase shifter length in the same order as traveling-wave modulators (TW-MZMs). A design limitation that needs to be taken into account consists in the optical transit time of the device, that limits the overall electro-optic bandwidth. First, we review the overall power consumption improvement as well as the bandwidth enhancement in LE modulators compared to TW-MZMs, also taking the driver output impedance and parasitics from wire-or bump-bonds into account. Then, we report on the design, implementation, and experimental characterization of carrier-depletion based M-MZMs fabricated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers using standard CMOS-compatible processes. The fabricated M-MZMs, provided with low (W1), moderately (W2) and highly (W3) doped junctions, require 9.2 Vpp, 5.5 Vpp, and 3.7 Vpp for full extinction, with optical insertion losses of 5 dB, 6.3 dB and 9.1 dB. For all three M-MZMs, open eye diagrams are recorded at 25 Gb/s using a 50 Ω driver and termination. For unterminated M-MZMs, higher data rates could be achieved, provided that a low output impedance driver be wire-or bump-bonded to the modulators. Finally, we compare the power consumption of the M-MZMs with TW-MZMs and show that the M-MZMs feature a 4X reduced power consumption at 25 Gb/s.

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“…Nonvolatile reconfigurable optics, on the other hand, have received considerable attention in recent years. − A large span of applications such as the passive biasing of Mach–Zehnder modulators and low power optical switches, as well as more future-looking applications, such as optical nonvolatile multilevel memories and adaptive neural networks, illustrate the relevance of photonic integrated circuit reconfigurability. Approaches for the latter in particular have included remanently changing the optical properties of ring resonators with phase change materials.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconfigurable Frequency-Selective Resonance Splitting in Chalcogenide Microring Resonators

et al. 2020

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This paper reports a method to enable, for the first time, reconfigurable control of resonance splitting of one or multiple arbitrarily selected azimuthal orders in a microring resonator. This is accomplished by inscribing Bragg gratings in photosensitive Ge23Sb7S70 chalcogenide microring resonators via a novel cavity-enhanced photoinscription process, in which injection of light at the targeted C-band resonance frequency induces a spatially varying refractive index change. The so-formed Bragg grating precisely matches the selected resonance order without introducing optical losses. Long-term room temperature stability of the photoinscribed Bragg gratings has been verified in darkness and during operation with reduced optical power levels. The Bragg gratings can be reconfigured by first erasure with flood illumination of visible light at 561 nm and subsequent reinscription. We also report controlled splitting of multiple resonances by inscribing superimposed Bragg gratings.

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Broadband, temperature tolerant and passively biased resonantly enhanced Mach-Zehnder modulators

Cited by 3 publications

References 25 publications

Silicon Nitride External Cavity Laser With Alignment Tolerant Multi-Mode RSOA-to-PIC Interface

Silicon Nitride External Cavity Laser With Alignment Tolerant Multi-Mode RSOA-to-PIC Interface

Power-efficient lumped-element meandered silicon Mach-Zehnder modulators

Reconfigurable Frequency-Selective Resonance Splitting in Chalcogenide Microring Resonators

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