Electro-absorption-based fast photonic integrated circuit sources for next network capacity scaling [invited]

Increasing component speed, throughput and efficiency inevitably leads to optoelectronic transmitters and receivers of more complexity, larger footprint, consumption and cost. Monolithic integration is known to help in solving these problems typical of discrete components. However, lowering of the cost, consumption and material usage must preserve high modulation performance especially while increasing the data rate. These issues are addressed by our new photonic integrated circuit technology on indium phosphide. The demonstrated laser transmitter circuits rely on electro-absorption modulators, one of the smallest and most energy-efficient electro-optic converters. By improving old and creating new component classes, this approach is expected to reduce dramatically their environmental footprint.