Ultralow drive voltage silicon traveling-wave modulator.

There has been great interest in the silicon platform as a material system for integrated photonics. A key challenge is the development of a low-power, low drive voltage, broadband modulator. Drive voltages at or below 1 Vpp are desirable for compatibility with CMOS processes.

New design and analysis of Bragg grating waveguides.

New design of optical waveguides is presented to synthesize Bragg grating waveguides without inducing birefringence. In the design, waveguide core has a thin trench on the top surface of the core and width of the trench is modulated concurrently with width modulation of the waveguide core. Effective refractive index profiles in Bragg grating waveguides are obtained by a differential inverse scattering algorithm and converted to waveguide width profiles by using the new core design.