Dual-Drive Directional Couplers for Programmable Integrated Photonics

A novel class of photonic integrated circuits employs large-scale integration of combined beam splitters and waveguides loaded with phase actuators to provide complex linear processing functionalities that can be reconfigured dynamically. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a thermally-actuated Dual-Drive Directional Coupler (DD-DC) design, integrated in a silicon nitride platform, functioning both as a standalone optical component providing arbitrary optical beam splitting and common phase as well as for its use in waveguide mesh arrangements. We analyze the experimental demonstration of the first integration of a triangular waveguide mesh arrangement, and the first DD-DC based arrangement along with an extended analysis of its performance and scalability

Recent implementations of fiber and integrated tunable microwave photonics filters

We present recent implementations of microwave photonic filters using the following two technologies: InP-based MDR (microdisk resonator) on and coupled to a nanophotonic SOI waveguide and dynamic Brillouin gratings (DBGs) in polarization maintaining fibers (PMF). Quasi-linear and continuously tunable ~360° phase shifts have been experimentally obtained when considering radiofrequencies greater than 18 GHz using MDR. Besides, we have designed and experimentally demonstrated multi-tap MWP filters, based on dynamic Brillouin grating reflectors in polarization maintaining fibers, showing a FSR variation larger than 60% in a two-tap filter