Design and experimental investigation of monolithic polarization controller with InGaAlAs/InAlAs multiple quantum wells

Abstract

We design active integrated polarization controller using half-ridge-waveguide polarization converter and InGaAlAs/InAlAs multiple-quantum-well-based phase shifters. From the numerical simulation and preliminary measurement, we demonstrate the feasibility of polarization switching to arbitrary state with less than 16.2-mW DC power consumption using a 5.6-mm-long device.

Design of a monolithic integrable differential polarization phase shifter using an optimized InGaAsP strained multi-quantum well layer stack

“…A polarization-dependent phase shifter can be used to introduce a phase difference between the transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) fractions of any input light's polarization. This component which we call the differential polarization phase shifter, has gained a lot of interest in diverse applications including torsion sensing [1], coherent receivers [2], phased array antenna [3] among others. Despite the importance of polarization phase shifter a lot of the previous designs for phase shifters focused only on TE polarization [4,5].…”

Design of InGaAsP phase modulator with asymmetrically coupled quantum wells for efficient polarization modulation

“…[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] While polarization modulators based on discrete components were commonly used in the previous system experiments, integrated polarization modulators are desired to achieve significant reduction in cost, size, and power consumption. [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] Among a variety of approaches, InP-based straight-line polarization modulators are attractive due to its simplicity, compactness, and capability of monolithically integrating active components, such as lasers and semiconductor optical amplifiers. [20][21][22][23][24] By cascading multiple stages of polarization converters (PC) and polarization-dependent phase modulators (PD-PM), we can convert the input light in the transverse-electric (TE) or transverse-magnetic (TM) mode to an arbitrary state-of-polarization (SOP) at the output.…”

“…[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] Among a variety of approaches, InP-based straight-line polarization modulators are attractive due to its simplicity, compactness, and capability of monolithically integrating active components, such as lasers and semiconductor optical amplifiers. [20][21][22][23][24] By cascading multiple stages of polarization converters (PC) and polarization-dependent phase modulators (PD-PM), we can convert the input light in the transverse-electric (TE) or transverse-magnetic (TM) mode to an arbitrary state-of-polarization (SOP) at the output. For efficient modulation, a PD-PM with a large polarization dependence is required.…”

“…For efficient modulation, a PD-PM with a large polarization dependence is required. However, previously demonstrated devices employed either a bulk InGaAsP 20) or a uniform multiple quantum well (MQW) layer 21,22) and, therefore, suffered from insufficient modulation efficiency.…”