Photonic integrated circuits in chalcogenide glass for all-optical signal processing

We report integrated devices in chalcogenide glass for all-optical signal processing, based on pure Kerr (near instantaneous) optical nonlinearities. We demonstrate an integrated 2R optical regenerator operating through a combination of nonlinear self-phase modulation followed by spectral filtering, with a potential to reach bit rates in excess of 1Tb/s. It consists of a low loss As2S3 chalcogenide rib waveguide incorporating a high quality Bragg grating written by an ultra-stable Sagnac interferometer. We achieve a nonlinear power transfer curve using 1.4ps pulses, sufficient for suppressing noise in an amplified link. In addition, we report photonic crystal structures fabricated by focused ion beam (FIB) milling in AMTIR-1 (Ge33As12Se55) chalcogenide glass. We realize high quality free-standing photonic crystal membranes, and observe optical "Fano" resonances in the transmission spectra at normal incidence. We achieve good agreement with theoretical results based on 3D finite difference time-domain calculations. Finally, we achieve resonant evanescent coupling to photonic crystal waveguides via tapered microstructured optical fibre (MOF) nanowires.

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