Abstract

High-speed electrooptic modulators and switches are in demand for many applications including high-data-rate optical communication, analog microwave optical links, and optical time division demultiplexing. Semiconductor quantum well electroabsorption modulators can be made very compact, ~100 μm, which provides capacitance-limited electrical bandwidths as high as 40 GHz¹ with drive voltages on the order of a few volts. On the other hand, semiconductor Pockels effect modulators in which the velocities of optical and electrical waves are well-matched can achieve even higher bandwidths² but require larger drive voltages. It is therefore important to explore how the low-voltage advantage of semiconductor quantum wells might be combined with a velocity-matched traveling wave structure to produce a low-power consumption modulator with the capability to reach millimeter wave frequencies.

© 1995 Optical Society of America