High-Speed Modulation of an Electrooptic Directional Coupler

A LiNbO3 directional coupler driven by an RF signal has been tested at 1.06 µm over a large modulation bandwidth. An analytical model has been developed leading to simple usable expressions to describe the theoretical dependence of the frequency spectrum of sinusoidally modulated light. The frequency response has been measured with a scanning Fabry-Perot and also with a high-speed photodiode. Both methods provided results which are in good agreement. The 9 mm long switch exhibited a 2.5 GHz bandwidth; a 16 dB extinction ratio has been achieved with a driving power of approximately 50 µW/MHz. The confirmation of practical modulation response expressions shows the advantage of the optical spectrum observation, which is a very simple measurement method without any bandwidth limitation. In addition, this method has the advantage of remaining quite accurate even for large modulation signals. Copyright © 1981 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.