Efficient layout-aware statistical analysis for photonic integrated circuits.

Fabrication variability significantly impacts the performance of photonic integrated circuits (PICs), which makes it crucial to quantify the impact of fabrication variations before the final fabrication. Such analysis enables circuit and system designers to optimize their designs to be more robust and obtain maximum yield when designing for manufacturing. This work presents a simulation methodology, Reduced Spatial Correlation Matrix-based Monte-Carlo (RSCM-MC), to efficiently study the impact of spatially correlated fabrication variations on the performance of PICs. First, a simple and reliable method to extract physical correlation lengths, variability parameters that define the inverse of the spatial frequencies of width and height variations over a wafer, is presented. Then, the process of generating correlated variations for MC simulations using RSCM-MC methodology is presented. The methodology generates correlated variations by first creating a reduced correlation matrix containing spatial correlations between all the circuit components, and then processing it using Cholesky decomposition to obtain correlated variations for all circuit components. These variations are then used to conduct MC simulations. The accuracy and the computation performance of the proposed methodology are compared with other layout-dependent Monte-Carlo simulation methodologies, such as Virtual wafer-based Monte-Carlo (VW-MC). A Mach-Zehnder lattice filter is used to study the accuracy, and a second-order Mach-Zehnder filter and a 16x16 optical switch matrix system are used to compare the computational performance.

High-performance silicon photonic tri-state switch based on balanced nested Mach-Zehnder interferometer.

ABSATRCT: This work proposes a novel silicon photonic tri-state (cross/bar/blocking) switch, featuring high-speed switching, broadband operation, and crosstalk-free performance. The switch is designed based on a 2 × 2 balanced nested Mach-Zehnder interferometer structure with carrier injection phase tuning. As compared to silicon photonic dual-state (cross/bar) switches based on Mach-Zehnder interferometers with carrier injection phase tuning, the proposed switch not only has better performance in cross/bar switching but also provides an extra blocking state. The unique blocking state has a great advantage in applications of N × N switch fabrics, where idle switching elements in the fabrics can be configured to the blocking state for crosstalk suppression. According to our numerical experiments on a fully loaded 8 × 8 dilated Banyan switch fabric, the worst output crosstalk of the 8 × 8 switch can be dramatically suppressed by more than 50 dB, by assigning the blocking state to idle switching elements in the fabric. The results of this work can extend the functionality of silicon photonic switches and significantly improve the performance of on-chip N × N photonic switching technologies.

Performance prediction for silicon photonics integrated circuits with layout-dependent correlated manufacturing variability.

This work develops an enhanced Monte Carlo (MC) simulation methodology to predict the impacts of layout-dependent correlated manufacturing variations on the performance of photonics integrated circuits (PICs). First, to enable such performance prediction, we demonstrate a simple method with sub-nanometer accuracy to characterize photonics manufacturing variations, where the width and height for a fabricated waveguide can be extracted from the spectral response of a racetrack resonator. By measuring the spectral responses for a large number of identical resonators spread over a wafer, statistical results for the variations of waveguide width and height can be obtained. Second, we develop models for the layout-dependent enhanced MC simulation. Our models use netlist extraction to transfer physical layouts into circuit simulators. Spatially correlated physical variations across the PICs are simulated on a discrete grid and are mapped to each circuit component, so that the performance for each component can be updated according to its obtained variations, and therefore, circuit simulations take the correlated variations between components into account. The simulation flow and theoretical models for our layout-dependent enhanced MC simulation are detailed in this paper. As examples, several ring-resonator filter circuits are studied using the developed enhanced MC simulation, and statistical results from the simulations can predict both common-mode and differential-mode variations of the circuit performance.

Compact broadband polarization beam splitter using a symmetric directional coupler with sinusoidal bends.

We design and demonstrate a compact broadband polarization beam splitter (PBS) using a symmetric directional coupler with sinusoidal bends on a silicon-on-insulator platform. The sinusoidal bends in our PBS suppress the power exchange between two parallel symmetric strip waveguides for the transverse-electric (TE) mode, while allowing for the maximum power transfer to the adjacent waveguide for the transverse-magnetic (TM) mode. Our PBS has a nominal coupler length of 8.55 µm, and it has an average extinction ratio (ER) of 12.0 dB for the TE mode, an average ER of 20.1 dB for the TM mode, an average polarization isolation (PI) of 20.6 dB for the through port, and an average PI of 11.5 dB for the cross port, all over a bandwidth of 100 nm.

Broadband 2 × 2 adiabatic 3 dB coupler using silicon-on-insulator sub-wavelength grating waveguides.

We report on a compact, broadband, 2×2 adiabatic 3 dB coupler using sub-wavelength gratings (SWGs) for silicon-on-insulator waveguides. In our device, two SWG waveguides that support two transverse electric modes and have tapered waveguide widths were used to achieve an adiabatic mode evolution of the two-waveguide system for broadband 3 dB power splitting. We present results for a SWG adiabatic 3 dB coupler that has an overall coupler length of 50 µm and achieves broadband power splitting over a 130 nm wavelength range with an imbalance of no greater than ±0.3 dB and with low excess losses of less than 0.5 dB.

Wideband silicon photonic polarization beamsplitter based on point-symmetric cascaded broadband couplers.

We design and demonstrate a wideband silicon photonic polarization beamsplitter on a silicon-on-insulator platform. The device consists of two 3 dB broadband couplers cascaded in a point-symmetric network. The transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) modes are coupled to different output ports due to a large difference between their coupling strengths. The device exhibits large isolation at both the two output ports, of more than 20 dB over a large bandwidth of 125 nm, and a small excess loss, of less than 0.5 dB for the entire C-band.

Design of broadband subwavelength grating couplers with low back reflection.

We present a methodology to design broadband grating couplers using one-dimensional subwavelength gratings. Using the presented method, we design subwavelength grating couplers (SWGCs) with 1-dB bandwidths ranging from 50 to 90 nm. Our designed SWGCs have competitive coupling efficiency, as high as -3.8 dB for the fundamental TE mode, and state-of-the-art back reflections, as low as -23 dB.

Dense dissimilar waveguide routing for highly efficient thermo-optic switches on silicon.

We analyze and demonstrate a method for increasing the efficiency of thermo-optic phase shifters on a silicon-on-insulator platform. The lack of cross-coupling between dissimilar waveguides allows highly dense waveguide routing under heating elements and a corresponding increase in efficiency. We demonstrate a device with highly dense routing of 9 waveguides under a 10 µm wide heater and achieve a low switching power of 95 µW, extinction ratio greater than 20 dB, and less than 0.1 dB ripple in the through spectrum with a footprint of less than 800 µm × 180 µm. The increase in waveguide density is found not to negatively impact the switch response time.

Spiral Bragg grating waveguides for TM mode silicon photonics.

We demonstrate spiral Bragg grating waveguides (BGWs) on the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform for the fundamental transverse magnetic (TM) mode. We also compare TM spiral waveguides to equivalent transverse electric (TE) spiral waveguides and show that the TM spiral waveguides have lower propagation losses. Our spiral waveguides are space-efficient, requiring only areas of 131×131 µm(2) to accommodate 4 mm long BGWs, and, thus, are less susceptible to fabrication non-uniformities. Due to the lengths and reduced susceptibility to fabrication non-uniformities, we were able to obtain narrow bandwidth, large extinction ratio (ER) devices, as narrow as 0.09 nm and as large as 52 dB, respectively. Finally, we demonstrate a 4 mm long TM chirped spiral Bragg grating waveguide with a negative, average, group delay slope of -11 ps/nm.

Broadband silicon photonic directional coupler using asymmetric-waveguide based phase control.

We design and demonstrate broadband directional couplers that use asymmetric-waveguide based phase control sections, on the silicon-on-insulator platform. Broadband directional couplers with various power splitting ratios, including 10%/90%, 20%/80%, 30%/70%, 40%/60% and 50%/50%, were realized for both transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) modes. Some of the devices exhitbit bandwidths in excess of 100 nm, and all in excess of 75 nm. The footprints of the TE mode couplers are 32 µm ×1.3 µm, or less, and those of the TM mode couplers are 13 µm ×1.3 µm, or less.

Giant circular polarization conversion in layer-by-layer nonchiral metamaterial.

We studied numerically the transmission properties of a kind of layer-by-layer nonchiral metamaterial. Simulation results show that under certain off-normal incidence, giant circular polarization conversion occurs for both the right and left circularly polarized waves with a roughly 1 GHz operation band. Meanwhile, the copolarization transmissions are almost suppressed to zero, leading to the high purity circular polarization transformation. This phenomenon of giant circular polarization conversion is assumed to suffer from the strong magnetic response, which is illustrated by the surface current distributions of the structure. Compared with chiral structures, this nonchiral structure is easier to design and fabricate and is expected to be used as a promising circular polarization transformer.

Similar structures, different characteristics: circular dichroism of metallic helix arrays with single-, double-, and triple-helical structures.

We fabricated three-dimensional metallic helix arrays with single-, double-, and triple-helical structures. The transmission performances with the normal incident angle were measured in the microwave frequency of 12-18 GHz. For the single- and double-helical structures, giant circular dichroism with fairly wide bands is observed in the transmission spectra. However, the triple-helical structure does not exhibit circular dichroism. Based on the phenomenon of circular dichroism, the single- and double-helical structures can be used as broadband circular polarizers in the microwave region, but triple-helical ones cannot. The experiments have a good agreement with our simulation results, which were studied by the finite-difference time domain method.

Electromagnetic manifestation of chirality in layer-by-layer chiral metamaterials.

The three-dimensional (3D) and two-dimensional (2D) chiral metamaterials (CMMs) have been proved to exhibit circular dichroism and circular conversion dichroism, respectively. The layer-by-layer chiral metamaterials, as a category of 3D CMMs, are expected to show the same properties as bulk 3D structures (e.g. helices). However, in this paper, we demonstrated that the layer-by-layer CMMs exhibit circular dichroism and circular conversion dichroism simultaneously by using both theoretical and experimental methods. This work showed that asymmetric transmissions of circular polarizations can also be observed in layer-by-layer CMMs. Moreover, we provided some necessary requirements for the existing of asymmetric transmissions in layer-by-layer CMMs.