This paper presents the development of a 2x2 optical switch which consists of a MEMS-based silicon micro-mirror structure and two bi-stable solenoid-based actuators. The silicon micro-mirror structure is realized by using a proposed simple single-step anisotropic silicon etching process. Bi-stable solenoid-based actuators are designed and developed. The proposed device, which adapts the split-cross bar (SCB) design as the optical-path configuration, has many advantages such as low power consumption, easy fiber alignment, simple manufacturing process, and simple actuation scheme. The measured insertion loss of the device is about -0.9 ~ -1.1 dB. The long-term reliability test shows that the deviations of the insertion losses are less than 0.03 dB after 10,000 switching cycles. Also, the measured cross-talk is about -60 dB, and the measured switching time is less than 10 ms.

We apply computing topological method to qualitatively analyze space of 8 8  optical flow patches. We experimentally prove that there exist subspaces of 8 8  optical flow patches that are topologically equivalent to a circle. For the space of 8 8  optical flow patches, we cannot find its subspaces having homology as that of the Klein bottle.

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