The authors present an optical range resonator based on single mode metal-insulator-metal plasmonic gap waveguides. Complete transmission at 90° bends would enable the design of rectangular structures with cross-section area less than 500nm2, which consequently leads to easing the fabrication process. The resonator exhibits a free spectral range of 270nm. We show that a small bridge between the resonator and the input waveguide can be used to tune the resonance frequency. In addition, ultracompact add/drop directional couplers are realizable using the presented ring resonator structure.

Silicon photonics has experienced phenomenal transformations over the last decade. In this paper, we present some of the notable advances in silicon-based passive and active optical interconnect components, and highlight some of our key contributions. Light is also cast on few other parallel technologies that are working in tandem with silicon-based structures, and providing unique functions not achievable with any single system acting alone. With an increasing utilization of CMOS foundries for silicon photonics fabrication, a viable path for realizing extremely low-cost integrated optoelectronics has been paved. These advances are expected to benefit several application domains in the years to come, including communication networks, sensing, and nonlinear systems.

In this paper, we present a modeling and design methodology based on characteristic impedance for plasmonic waveguides with Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM) configuration. Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) simulations indicate that the impedance matching results in negligible reflection at discontinuities in MIM heterostructures. Leveraging the MIM impedance model, we present a general Transfer Matrix Method model for MIM Bragg reflectors and validate our model against FDTD simulations. We show that both periodically stacked dielectric layers of different thickness or different material can achieve the same performance in terms of propagation loss and minimum transmission at the central bandgap frequency in the case of a finite number of periods.

We demonstrate a through-etched grating coupler based on subwavelength nanostructure. The grating consists of arrays of 80 nm  343 nm rectangular air holes, which can be patterned in a single lithography/etch. A peak coupling efficiency of 59% at 1551.6 nm and a 3 dB bandwidth of 60 nm are achieved utilizing the silicon-on-insulator platform with a 1 lm thick buried-oxide layer for transverse electric mode. The performance is comparable to gratings requiring much more complicated fabrication processes. V

We design and demonstrate a compact and low-power band-engineered electro-optic (EO) polymer refilled silicon slot photonic crystal waveguide (PCW) modulator. The EO polymer is engineered for large EO activity and near-infrared transparency. A PCW step coupler is used for optimum coupling to the slow-light mode of the band-engineered PCW. The half-wave switching-voltage is measured to be Vπ=0.97±0.02V over optical spectrum range of 8nm, corresponding to the effective in-device r33 of 1190pm/V and Vπ×L of 0.291±0.006V×mm in a push-pull configuration. Excluding the slow-light effect, we estimate the EO polymer is poled with an efficiency of 89pm/V in the slot. [6]. The fabrication process of these devices involves the poling of the EO polymer at an elevated temperature. Unfortunately, the leakage current due to the charge injection through silicon/polymer interface significantly reduces the poling efficiency in narrow slot waveguides (slot width, S w <200nm). Among the abovementioned structure, the slot PCW can support optical mode for S w as large as 320nm [7]. Such a wide slot was shown to reduce the leakage current by two orders of magnitude resulting in 5х improvement in the in-device r 33 compared to a slot PCW with S w =75nm [7].One problem remains among slot PCW modulators is their narrow operating optical bandwidth of <1nm [8][9][10] because of the high group velocity dispersion (GVD) in the slow-light optical spectrum range. To broaden the operating optical bandwidth of PCW modulators, lattice shifted PCWs can be employed, where the spatial shift of certain holes can modify the structure to provide low-dispersion slow light [11][12][13][14][15].In this letter we report a symmetric MZI modulator based on band-engineered slot PCW refilled with EO polymer, SEO125 from Soluxra, LLC. SEO125 exhibits exceptional combination of large EO activity, low optical loss, and good temporal stability. Its r 33 value of poled thin films is around 125pm/V at the wavelength of 1310 nm, which is measured by the Teng-Man reflection technique. The design and synthesis of SEO125 encompasses recent development of highly efficient nonlinear optical chromophores with a few key molecular and material parameters, including large β values, good near-infrared transparency, excellent chemicaland photo-stability, and improved processability in polymers [16]. Using a band-engineered EO polymer refilled slot PCW with S w =320nm, we demonstrate a slow-light enhanced effective in-device r 33 of 1190pm/V over 8nm optical spectrum range. Excluding the slow-light effect, we estimate in-device material' r 33 of 89pm/V for SEO125 in the slot that show 51% improvement compared to the results (59pm/V) in [7]. A schematic of the device on silicon on insulator (SOI) (Si thickness=250nm, oxide thickness=3μm) is shown in Fig. 1 (a). The input and output strip waveguides are connected to the device using a strip-to-slot waveguide mode converter. PCW couplers consisting of a fast-light section [17] connect the mode converters to a 300μm-long slow-ligh...

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We present a 32 channel indium phosphide integrated pulse shaper with 25 GHz channel spacing, where each channel is equipped with a semiconductor optical amplifier allowing for programmable line-by-line gain control with submicrosecond reconfigurability. We critically test the integrated pulse shaper by using it in comb-based RF-photonic filtering experiments where the precise gain control is leveraged to synthesize high-fidelity RF filters which we reconfigure on a microsecond time scale. Our on-chip pulse shaping demonstration is unmatched in its combination of speed, fidelity, and flexibility, and will likely open new avenues in the field of advanced broadband signal generation and processing.

We present an experimental demonstration of an optical phased array implementation on silicon nanomembrane. The integrated on-chip array configuration is non-uniform and avoids grating lobes inside the field of view during beam steering while allowing the waveguide separation to be large enough to prevent optical coupling. A 1 × 12 multimode interference beam splitter uniformly excites the arrayed waveguides. Individually controllable micro-heaters modulate the optical phase in the arrayed waveguides. A beam steering angle of 10.2° in a silicon planar guide equivalent to an effective steering angle of 31.9° in air is demonstrated at 1.55 μm.