To address the bandwidth bottleneck that exists between LSI chips, we have proposed a novel, high-sensitivity receiver circuit for differential optical transmission on a silicon optical interposer. Both anodes and cathodes of the differential photodiodes (PDs) were designed to be connected to a transimpedance amplifier (TIA) through coupling capacitors. Reverse bias voltage was applied to each of the differential PDs through load resistance. The proposed receiver circuit achieved double the current signal amplitude of conventional differential receiver circuits. The frequency response of the receiver circuit was analyzed using its equivalent circuit, wherein the temperature dependence of the PD was implemented. The optimal load resistances of the PDs were determined to be 5kΩ by considering the tradeoff between the frequency response and bias voltage drop. A small dark current of the PD was important to reduce the voltage drop, but the bandwidth degradation was negligible if the dark current at room temperature was below 1µA. The proposed circuit achieved 3-dB bandwidths of 18.9 GHz at 25°C and 13.7 GHz at 85°C. Clear eye openings in the TIA output waveforms for 25-Gbps 27-1 pseudorandom binary sequence signals were obtained at both temperatures.

We fabricated various microscopic optical devices with Si photonic wire waveguides and demonstrated their fundamental characteristics. The bending loss of the waveguide was practically negligible when the bending radius of the waveguide exceeded 5 µm. Therefore, we can fabricate very compact optical devices with the waveguide. We demonstrated an optical directional coupler with the waveguide. The coupling length of the directional coupler was extremely small, several micrometers, because of strong optical coupling between the waveguide cores. We also demonstrated ultrasmall optical add/drop multiplexers (OADMs) with Bragg grating reflectors constructed from the waveguides. The dropping wavelength bandwidth of the OADM device was less than 2 nm and the dropping center wavelength could be tuned using thermooptic control with a microheater formed on the Bragg reflector. Using the Si photonic wire waveguide, we also demonstrated thermooptic switches by forming a microheater on a branch of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer made up of the waveguides. In this switching operation, we observed an extinction ratio exceeding 30 dB, a switching power less than 90 mW, and a switching response speed less than 100 µs using a 12 optical switch with an 8530 µm2 footprint.

Silicon photonic devices based on silicon photonic wire waveguides are especially attractive devices, since they can be ultra-compact and low-power consumption. In this paper, we demonstrated various devices fabricated on silicon photonic wire waveguides. They included optical directional couplers, reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers, 12, 14, 18 and 44 optical switches, ring resonators. The characteristics of these devices show that silicon photonic wire waveguides offer promising platforms in constructing compact and power-saving photonic devices and systems.

Low-loss optical coupling structures between photonic crystal waveguides and channel waveguides were investigated. It was emphasized that impedance matching of guided modes of those waveguides, as well as field-profile matching, was essential to achieving the low-loss optical coupling. We developed an impedance matching theory for Bloch waves, and applied it to designing the low-loss optical coupling structures. It was demonstrated that the optical coupling loss between a photonic crystal waveguide and a Si-channel waveguide was reduced to as low as 0.7 dB by introducing an interface structure for impedance matching between the two waveguides.

Well-defined wavelength distributed feedback laser diodes (DFB-LDs) are required in WDM network systems. Since the EDFA gain bands have been expanded, even more wavelengths are needed for large-capacity dense-WDM transmission systems. A precisely pitch-controlled Bragg grating fabricated by electron beam (EB) lithography is very attractive for realizing these DFB-LDs. This paper describes this precise pitch- and phase-controlled grating delineated by a novel method called weighted-dose allocation variable-pitch EB-lithography (WAVE). In this method, an EB-dose profile for the grating is precisely controlled by a combination of the allocation and weighting of multiple exposures. This enables us to fabricate a precise fixed-pitch grating as well as a flexible grating with a continuously chirped structure. The stitching error at the exposure field boundary, the grating pitch, and the phase shift were evaluated by using a moire pattern generated by superimposing the microscope raster scan and the grating on a wafer. We also estimated amounts of the stitching errors from fabricated and calculated lasing characteristics, and clarified that the affect of the errors on the single-mode stability of LDs is negligible. Precise wavelength controlled λ/4 phase shifted DFB-LDs were successfully demonstrated as a result of both the WAVE method and the highly uniform MOVPE crystal growth.

Performance suveyrance of CPML (Convolutional PML) for FDTD (Finite-Difference Time-Domain) method in cylindrical coordinate system was carried out. The CPML was placed perpendicularly to the radial axis and designed to absorb diverging or converging waves. To be able to analyze microstructured optical fibers and disk/ring resonators we introduced finite axial wavenumbers into the FDTD formulation. We investigated the dependence of reflectivity upon CPML's constituteve parameters such as $kappa$ and $sigma$ for various curvature radii and the axial wavenumbers. As a result of evaluation we found that the reflectivity gradually increased togather with the increase of the wavenumber. We also confirmed that the absorption performance was of the similar order for the converging waves and the diverging ones provided that their curvature radii were the same.

We report on a channel drop filter with a mode gap in the propagating mode of a photonic crystal slab that was fabricated on silicon on an insulator wafer. The results, simulated with the 3-dimensional finite-difference time-domain and plane-wave methods, demonstrated that an index-guiding mode for the line defect waveguide of a photonic crystal slab has a band gap at wave vector k = 0.5 for a mainly TM-like light-wave. The mode gap works as a distributed Bragg grating reflector that propagates the light-wave through the line defect waveguide, and can be used as an optical filter. The filter bandwidth was varied from 1-8 nm with an r/a (r: hole radius, a: lattice constant) variation around the wavelength range of 1550-1600 nm. We fabricated a Bragg reflector with a photonic crystal line-defect waveguide and Si-channel waveguides and by measuring the transmittance spectrum found that the Bragg reflector caused abrupt dips in transmittance. These experimental results are consistent with the results of the theoretical analysis described above. Utilizing the Bragg reflector, we fabricated channel dropping filters with photonic crystal slabs connected between channel waveguides and demonstrated their transmittance characteristics. They were highly drop efficient, with a flat-top drop-out spectrum at a wavelength of 1.56 µm and a drop bandwidth of 5.8 nm. Results showed that an optical add-drop multiplexer with a 2-D photonic crystal will be available for application in WDM devices for photonic networks and for LSIs in the near future.

A compact and stable optical sampling measurement system with a temporal resolution of 2 ps has been developed. External-cavity mode-locked laser-diode (EC-MLLD) modules, which directly generate coherent 2-ps optical pulses, were used as the optical sampling pulse sources. Real-time measurement of the recovery dynamics in semiconductor saturable absorber devices has been achieved by optical sampling combined with the pump-probe method. An EC-MLLD module was also utilized for simple sub-harmonic all-optical clock recovery based on the synchronization of the mode-locking operation by optical-pulse injection. Optical sampling measurement of 160-Gbit/s return-to-zero signals incorporating all-optical clock recovery has been demonstrated.

Microwave modulation in frequency region of 5.9 to 10 GHz was determined in TJS and BH lasers. Incident microwave power was less than 32 mW at 10 GHz. Modulation mechanism was regarded to be caused by driving of the injected-carrier-dencity even at such high frequency.