Optically Tunable Gratings for Optical Interconnects.

摘要

The properties of a nonlinear grating coupler were investigated for application to an all-optical beam scanner for optical interconnects. En route, this program achieved four distinct goals: 1. Bistability was demonstrated for grating coupling into ZnS waveguides utilizing a diffusive nonlinearity (thermal). 2. It was shown theoretically that a diffusive nonlinearity is required to obtain bistability in a nonlinear grating (or prism) coupler. This cleared up a 5 year controversy in the literature. 3. An all-optical beam scanner was demonstrated in which the scan angle of a signal beam is tuned by varying the input power of the control beam. Both smooth and bistable scanning was implemented. 4. This device was analysed theoretically for both non-local and local (Kerr) nonlinearities. It was shown that Kerr nonlinearities lead to a non-unique response. Keywords: Optical interconnects; All optical beam scanner; Nonlinear grating coupler; Bistable nonlinear grating coupler. (jhd)