High Speed Travelling Wave Carrier Depletion Silicon Mach-Zehnder Modulator

Abstract: We present the first demonstration of a travelling wave carrier depletion Mach-Zehnder modulator impedance matched to 50 : This device has a bandwidth of 24 GHz and a halfwave voltage length product of 0.7 V-cm, placing it among the best in its class

Low-power high-speed silicon microdisk modulators

Abstract: A novel silicon microdisk modulator with "error-free" ~3 femtojoule/bit modulation at 12.5Gbs has been demonstrated. Modulation with a 1 volt swing allows for compatibility with current and future digital logic CMOS electronics

SANDIA REPORT Thermal Microphotonic Focal Plane Array (TM-FPA) NOTICE: Thermal Microphotonic Focal Plane Array (TM-FPA)

Abstract The advent of high quality factor (Q) microphotonic-resonators has led to the demonstration of high-fidelity optical sensors of many physical phenomena (e.g. mechanical, chemical, and biological sensing) often with far better sensitivity than traditional techniques. Microphotonic-resonators also offer potential advantages as uncooled thermal detectors including significantly better noise performance, smaller pixel size, and faster response times than current thermal detectors. In particular, microphotonic thermal detectors do not suffer from Johnson noise in the sensor, offer far greater responsivity, and greater thermal isolation as they do not require metallic leads to the sensing element. Such advantages make the prospect of a microphotonic thermal imager highly attractive. Here, we introduce the microphotonic thermal detection technique, present the theoretical basis for the approach, discuss our progress on the development of this technology and consider future directions for thermal microphotonic imaging. Already we have demonstrated viability of device fabrication with the successful demonstration of a 20µm pixel, and a scalable readout technique. Further, to date, we have achieved internal noise performance (NEP Internal < 1pW/ √ Hz) in a 20µm pixel thereby exceeding the noise performance of the best microbolometers while simultaneously demonstrating a thermal time constant (τ = 2ms) that is five times faster. In all, this results in an internal detectivity of D * internal = 2 × 10 9 cm· √ Hz/W, while roughly a factor of four better than the best uncooled commercial microbolometers, future demonstrations should enable another order of magnitude in sensitivity. While much work remains to achieve the level of maturity required for a deployable technology, already, microphotonic thermal detection has demonstrated considerable potential. 3 Acknowledgemen

Integrated optical phase locked loop

Abstract: A silicon photonics based integrated optical phase locked loop is utilized to synchronize a 10.2 GHz voltage controlled oscillator with a 509 MHz mode locked laser, achieving 32 fs integrated jitter over 300 kHz bandwidth