Reconfigurable silicon photonic circuits for telecommunication applications

Abstract

Photonic circuits based on silicon wire waveguides have attracted significant interest in recent years. They allow strong confinement of light with moderately low propagation losses. Moreover, the high thermo-optical coefficient of silicon and the small device size in silicon photonics allow for micro-heaters induced trimming, tuning, and switching with relatively low power. In this paper, we review our recent progress towards telecom-grade reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers (ROADMs) based on silicon microring resonators. We discuss waveguide and micro-heater design and fabrication as well as the first demonstration of telecom-grade silicon-microring filters and the first demonstration of transparent wavelength switching. The reported devices can be employed in numerous optical interconnect schemes.