Abstract

Substantial progress in the level of integration of optical switches has been made at several laboratories, with Ti:LiNbO₃ crossbar arrays as large as 8×8 on a single chip having been demonstrated [1]. Typical operating speeds of the crosspoints of these switches are ~100 MHz. For some applications, such as optical time-division multiplexing [2], crosspoints operating at microwave frequencies are desirable. One promising approach to realize crosspoints for gigahertz rates is a traveling-wave Δβ-reversal directional coupler switch [3]. In this paper we report optical switches that consist of several of these high-speed crosspoints integrated on a single substrate. Critical to the performance of these integrated devices are the coupler and inter-coupler crosstalk levels. We present measurements of both up to multi-gigahertz frequencies.

© 1988 Optical Society of America