The effect of conductor loss on half-wave voltage and modulation bandwidth of electro-optic modulators

摘要

In this paper, we theoretically deduce the expressions of half-wave voltage and 3-dB modulation bandwidth in which conductor loss is taken into account. The results suggest that it will affect the theoretical values of half-wave voltage and bandwidth as well as the optimized electrode's dimension whether considering the conductor loss or not. As an example, we present a Mach-Zehnder (MZ) type polymer waveguide amplitude modulator. The half-wave voltage increases by 1 V and the 3-dB bandwidth decreases by 30% when the conductor loss is taken into account. Besides, the effects of impedance mismatching and velocity mismatching between microwave and light wave on the half-wave voltage, and 3-dB bandwidth are discussed.