High Density Optical Interconnection Based on Free Space Non-Diffracting Beams

摘要

Optical interconnects are required for high speed opto-electronic packaged computing systems for fast access to large intelligent database and for fast image data processing. However, existing free space optical interconnection suffers from diffraction limitation of interconnect line density and requires many large and sophisticated beam collimation, focusing, and interconnect reconfiguration elements. It is preferred to have small interconnection beams and with large interconnection distance. Such contradictory requirement is not possible by conventional Gaussian optical beams propagating in free space. It is however possible using non-diffracting beams since the diffraction contribution of the non-diffracting beam permits the beam to propagate in free space for a substantially large distance without significant beam size broadening. In this Phase I SBIR program New Span Opto-Technology Inc. in collaboration with University of Miami demonstrated the feasibility of high-density optical interconnection based on free space non-diffracting beams. Using a diffractive beam shaper we achieved 87% efficiency. We also achieved 100 micron beam propagation of 40 cm range.