Optical thresholder consisting of two cascaded Mach–Zehnder interferometers with nonlinear microring resonators

Hiroki Kishikawa; Tadashi Kondo; Nobuo Goto; Srinivas Talabattula

doi:10.1117/1.OE.56.8.086101

4 August 2017 Optical thresholder consisting of two cascaded Mach–Zehnder interferometers with nonlinear microring resonators

Hiroki Kishikawa, Tadashi Kondo, Nobuo Goto, Srinivas Talabattula

Author Affiliations +

Optical Engineering, Vol. 56, Issue 8, 086101 (August 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.56.8.086101

Abstract

We propose an optical thresholder having a flat power transfer function both in low- and high-level outputs. The optical thresholder consists of two cascaded Mach–Zehnder interferometers (MZIs) with a nonlinear microring resonator in each MZI. We theoretically analyze the power transfer function and the response speed of the thresholder made of silicon waveguides. A thresholder having the threshold of 7 mW with a response speed of 13 GHz was obtained with a ring radius of 5 _μm. The response speed can be increased to 23.7 GHz by adjusting device parameters with the same ring radius at the cost of increased threshold of 22 mW. Further increased response frequency can be realized by reducing the ring radius. A thresholder with a ring radius of 2 _μm shows the response frequency of 40.5 GHz.

Citation Download Citation

Hiroki Kishikawa, Tadashi Kondo, Nobuo Goto, and Srinivas Talabattula "Optical thresholder consisting of two cascaded Mach–Zehnder interferometers with nonlinear microring resonators," Optical Engineering 56(8), 086101 (4 August 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.56.8.086101

Received: 10 May 2017; Accepted: 13 July 2017; Published: 4 August 2017

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