An all-optical switch employing the cascaded second-order nonlinear effect

Author

Ironside, C.N. ; Aitchison, J.S. ; Arnold, J.M.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron. & Electr. Eng., Glasgow Univ., UK

Volume

29

Issue

10

fYear

1993

fDate

10/1/1993 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

2650

Lastpage

2654

Abstract

A new, ultrafast, low loss, all-optical switch based on the cascaded second-order nonlinearity is proposed. The device is based on an integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometer where quasi-phase matching produces a nonlinear phase shift with a different sign in each arm of the interferometer. A full treatment of the nonlinear phase shift indicates that the proposed device, if fabricated in AlGaAs, could switch with powers around 1.3 W in a length of approximately 1 cm

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; aluminium compounds; gallium arsenide; integrated optics; light interferometers; nonlinear optics; optical switches; semiconductor switches; 1 cm; 1.3 W; AlGaAs; all-optical switch; cascaded second-order nonlinear effect; integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometer; interferometer arm; low loss; nonlinear phase shift; quasi-phase matching; ultrafast; Councils; Gratings; Optical frequency conversion; Optical interferometry; Optical waveguides; Phase measurement; Phase shifting interferometry; Refractive index; Switches; Terrorism;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9197

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/3.250387

Filename

250387