Low-loss high-extinction-ratio single-drive push-pull silicon Michelson interferometric modulator

We demonstrate a high-speed silicon carrier-depletion Michelson interferometric (MI) modulator with a low on-chip insertion loss of 3 dB. The modulator features a compact size of 30  dB. The Vπ·Lπ of the MI modulator is 0.95–1.26  V·cm under a reverse bias of −1  to −8  V, indicating a high modulation efficiency. Experimental results show that a 4-level pulse amplitude modulation up to 20 Gbaud is achieved with a bit error rate of 6×10−3, and a 30 Gb/s binary phase-shift-keying modulation is realized with an error vector magnitude of 25.8%.