A Polarization-insensitive and High-speed Electro-optic Switch Based on a Hybrid Silicon and Lithium Niobate Platform

TL;DR

This paper presents a hybrid silicon and lithium niobate optical switch that is polarization-insensitive, operates at high speed with sub-nanosecond switching, and consumes low power, suitable for advanced optical switching applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hybrid platform enabling polarization-insensitive, high-speed, low-power optical switching with low polarization-dependent loss.

Findings

Switching time below 1 nanosecond

Drive voltage of 4.97 V

Polarization dependence loss under 0.8 dB

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate a polarization-insensitive and high speed optical switch unit based on a silicon and lithium niobate hybrid integration platform. The presented device exhibits a sub nano-second switching time, low drive voltages of 4.97 V, and low power dissipation due to electrostatic operation. The measured polarization dependence loss was lower than 0.8 dB. The demonstrated optical switch could provide as a building block for polarization-insensitive and high-speed optical matrix switches.