Enabling Tb/s Photonic Routing: Development of Advanced Hybrid Integrated Photonic Devices to Realize High-Speed, All-Optical Packet Switching

We present recent advances in photonic integration introduced by integration-related European research project IST-MUFINS. The contribution of the project in the progress of a functional photonic integration is outlined, from device fabrication to device application focusing on photonic routing using multielement photonic chips. Specifically, we report on the transition from single-element to multielement photonic devices with the fabrication of hybrid integrated arrays of optical switches exploiting and upgrading the silica-on-silicon hybrid photonic integration. We demonstrate how the enhanced processing power and capacity of these components can be exploited to implement key functionalities required in next-generation fully integrated terabits per second photonic routers.