High-Extinction Reconfigurable Mach-Zehnder Interferometer Based on Silicon Photonic MEMS

Abstract

Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) is one of the essential components of photonic integrated circuits (PICs), such as quantum applications and optical neural networks [1,2]. These applications demand a high dynamic range between on and off state. However, due to the fabrication imperfection, their modulation extinction is limited. There are some approaches to achieve a high modulation extinction of MZI and basic concept is to use additional MZIs to compensate the optical power distribution error (splitter and combiner) [3,4]. However, their modulation mechanisms are based on thermo-optic effect which consumes high electrical power. Also, the thermal crosstalk between the devices is the bottleneck for large-scale PICs. The micro-electro mechanical system (MEMS) based PIC is one of the solutions, and recently large-scale MEMS PICs have been reported [5].