Longitudinal 2 x 2 Switching Configurations Based on Thermo-Optically Addressed Dielectric-Loaded Plasmonic Waveguides

Author

Pitilakis, Alexandros ; Kriezis, Emmanouil E.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Aristotle Univ. of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

Volume

29

Issue

17

fYear

2011

Firstpage

2636

Lastpage

2646

Abstract

Longitudinal 2 × 2 thermo-optic switches based on dielectric-loaded plasmonic circuitry are thoroughly studied using vectorial numerical tools, i.e., an eigenmode solver and a beam propagation method, implemented with the finite-element technique. The switching configurations studied are based on the Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) and a novel multimode interference (MMI) design. Both components offer improved performance, with respect to comparable microring-based ones, exhibiting larger bandwidth and output port extinction ratio, allowing values up to 30 dB. The reference MZI configuration has better overall performance when compared to the MMI, mainly in terms of available bandwidth.

Keywords

Mach-Zehnder interferometers; eigenvalues and eigenfunctions; extinction coefficients; finite element analysis; optical design techniques; optical switches; optical waveguides; plasmonics; thermo-optical devices; Mach-Zehnder interferometer; beam propagation method; eigenmode solver; finite-element method; longitudinal 2 × 2 switching configurations; multimode interference design; output port extinction ratio; thermo-optic switches; thermo-optical dielectric-loaded plasmonic waveguides; Erbium; Heating; Optical switches; Optical waveguides; Plasmons; Polymers; Beam propagation method; Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI); dielectric-loaded plasmonic waveguide; multimode interference (MMI); plasmonic components; thermo-optic effect;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Lightwave Technology, Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0733-8724

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JLT.2011.2162227

Filename

5955059