Broadband hitless silicon electro-optic switch for on-chip optical networks

Abstract

We report on the demonstration of a broadband (60 GHz), spectrally hitless, compact (20 microm x 40 microm), fast (7 ns) electro-optical switch. The device is composed of two coupled resonant cavities, each with an independently addressable PIN diode. This topology enables operation of the switch without perturbing adjacent channels in a wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) system.