40-GHz electro-optic polarization modulator for fiber optic communications systems

By J. Bull, N. Jaeger, H. Kato, M. Fairburn, A. Reid, P. Ghanipour. Photonics North, 2004

181 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A novel ultrahigh-speed electro-optic polarization modulator is introduced. The modulator uses a mode converter and a static polarization controller to change the output polarization state in a circular path, following a great circle, around the Poincaré sphere. Any two states on the Poincaré sphere can be connected. The mode converter is constructed using an AlGaAs ridge waveguide combined with slow-wave travelling wave electrodes. The travelling wave electrodes are designed to match the velocity of the electrical modulating signal, the data signal, to the optical carrier signal over a broad frequency range. This modulator demonstrates a 3 dB bandwidth in excess of 40 GHz. The polarization modulator exhibits extremely low differential group delay, on the order of a few 10s of femto-seconds, and low drive voltage, on the order of 5 V.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8452e008b90301d8dba5da00259b4a8a315eb263