Plasmonics provides a possible route to overcome both the speed limitations of electronics and the critical dimensions of photonics. We present an all-plasmonic 116-gigabits per second electro-optical modulator in which all the elements-the vertical grating couplers, splitters, polarization rotators, and active section with phase shifters-are included in a single metal layer. The device can be realized on any smooth substrate surface and operates with low energy consumption. Our results show that plasmonics is indeed a viable path to an ultracompact, highest-speed, and low-cost technology that might find many applications in a wide range of fields of sensing and communications because it is compatible with and can be placed on a wide variety of materials.

In order to address the challenge of increasing data rates, next generation optical communication networks will require the co-integration of electronics and photonics. Heterogeneous integration of these technologies has shown promise, but will eventually become bandwidth limited. Faster monolithic approaches will, therefore, be needed, but monolithic approaches using complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) electronics and silicon photonics are typically limited by their underlying electronic or photonic technologies. Here, we report a monolithically integrated electro-optical transmitter that can achieve symbol rates beyond 100 GBd. Our approach combines advanced bipolar CMOS with silicon plasmonics, and addresses key challenges in monolithic integration through the co-design of the electronic and plasmonic layers, including thermal design, packaging, and a nonlinear organic electro-optic material. To illustrate the potential of our technology, we develop two modulator conceptsan ultra-compact plasmonic modulator and, alternatively, a silicon-plasmonic modulator with photonic routing -both directly processed onto the bipolar CMOS electronics.

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A deep learning (DL) based digital backpropagation (DBP) method with a 1 dB SNR gain over a conventional 1 step per span DBP is demonstrated in a 32 GBd 16QAM transmission across 1200 km. The new DL-DPB is shown to require 6 times less computational power over the conventional DBP scheme. The achievement is possible due to a novel training method in which the DL-DBP is blind to timing error, state of polarization rotation, frequency offset and phase offset. An analysis of the underlying mechanism is given. The applied method first undoes the dispersion, compensates for nonlinear effects in a distributed fashion and reduces the out of band nonlinear modulation due to compensation of the nonlinearities by having a low pass characteristic. We also show that it is sufficient to update the elements of the DL network using a signal with high nonlinearity when dispersion or nonlinearity conditions changes. Lastly, simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme is suitable to deal with impairments from transmission over longer distances.

A new plasmonic transmitter solution offering 0.8 Tbit/s on an ultra-compact 90 µm × 5.5 µm footprint is introduced. It comprises a densely arranged four-channel plasmonic phase modulator array that directly interconnects an optical fiber array. Each plasmonic modulator features high-index grating couplers-for direct and efficient conversion from a fiber mode to a plasmonic slot mode and vice versa-and a plasmonic waveguide-for efficient high-speed modulation. The individual devices achieve data rates of 200 Gbit/s with a symbol rate of 100 GBd. Electrical and optical crosstalk between neighboring modulators were found to have no significant influence on the data modulation experiment. The modulator array has been tested in a 100 GBd experiment with signals at a single wavelength (mimicking a space division multiplexing scheme) and at different wavelengths (mimicking a wavelength division multiplexing experiment).

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New high-speed photonic technologies and co-integration with electronics are required to keep up with the demand of future optical communication systems. In this paper, plasmonics is presented as one of the most promising next-generation photonic technologies that already fulfils these requirements in proof-of-concept demonstrations. Plasmonics features not only modulators and detectors of highest speed, but also compactness, cost-and energy-efficiency, and compatibility with CMOS electronics. Recently, co-integration with electronics was demonstrated with record performances of 222 GBd in a hybrid InP electronic-plasmonic transmitter assembly and of 120 GBd with a monolithic BiCMOS electronicplasmonic transmitter.