Publication # 288

Traditional optical-electronic-optical (o-e-o) conversion in today’s optical networks requires cascading separately packaged electronic and optoelectronic chips and propagating high-speed electrical signals through and between these discrete modules.  This increases the packaging and component costs, size, power consumption, and heat dissipation.  As a remedy, we introduce a novel, chip-scale photonic switching architecture that operates by confining high-speed electrical signals in a compact optoelectronic chip and provides multiple network functions on such a single chip.  This new technology features low optical and electrical power consumption, small installation space, high-speed operation, two-dimensional scalability, and remote electrical configurability. In this paper, we present both theoretical and experimental discussion of our monolithically integrated photonic switches that incorporate quantum-well waveguide modulators directly driven by on-chip surface-illuminated photodetectors.  These switches can be conveniently arrayed two-dimensionally on a single chip to realize a number of network functions.  Of those, we have experimentally demonstrated arbitrary wavelength conversion across 45 nm and dual-wavelength broadcasting over 20 nm, both spanning the telecommunication center band (1530 nm - 1565 nm) at switching speeds up to 2.5 Gb/s.  Our theoretical calculations predict the capability of achieving optical switching at rates in excess of 10 Gb/s using milliwatt-level optical and electrical switching powers.

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