Application of superconducting electrodes to resonant-type LiNbO/sub 3/ optical modulator

A study has been made of a resonant type LiNbO/sub 3/ optical modulator employing superconducting electrodes. Numerical calculations of the modulation depth of the optical modulator show that the driving power of the optical modulator using superconducting electrodes can be much smaller than that using normal metals. Experiments to demonstrate the operations of the optical modulator with Pb-In electrodes resonant at 14.8 GHz have been successfully made at 4.2 K. An excellent agreement between theory and experiments is obtained. It is shown that the modulation power in the superconducting state was estimated to be as small as 140 mW compared with 400 mW in the normal state. The present results demonstrate the possible application of superconducting electrodes to high performance LMbO/sub 3/ optical modulators.<>