title: On-chip passive three-port circuit of all-optical ordered-route transmission.
abstract: On-chip photonic circuits of different specific functions are highly desirable and becoming significant demands in all-optical communication network. Especially, the function to control the transmission directions of the optical signals in integrated circuits is a fundamental research. Previous schemes, such as on-chip optical circulators, are mostly realized by Faraday effect which suffers from material incompatibilities between semiconductors and magneto-optical materials. Achieving highly functional circuits in which light circulates in a particular direction with satisfied performances are still difficult in pure silicon photonics platform. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a three-port passive device supporting optical ordered-route transmission based on silicon thermo-optic effect for the first time. By injecting strong power from only one port, the light could transmit through the three ports in a strict order (1→2, 2→3, 3→1) while be blocked in the opposite order (1→3, 3→2, 2→1). The blocking extinction ratios and operation bandwidths have been investigated in this paper. Moreover, with compact size, economic fabrication process and great extensibility, this proposed photonic integrated circuit is competitive to be applied in on-chip all-optical information processing systems, such as path priority selector.
authors.affiliation: Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074 China.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074 China.
authors.forename: Jianji
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.affiliation: 1] Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074 China [2] State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun, 130012 China.
authors.forename: Dingshan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.affiliation: Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074 China.
authors.forename: Aoling
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.affiliation: 1] Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074 China [2] State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun, 130012 China.
authors.forename: Xinliang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang