Abstract

Recently, optical mode-division multiplexing has drawn a lot of attention due to its ability to increase the optical communication capacity in one physical channel with a single wavelength carrier. In this Letter, we demonstrate reconfigurable mode-selective modulation which is potentially useful for on-chip mode-multiplexed photonic systems. The device consists of two mode exchangers and one ${{\rm TE}_1}$ mode modulator. The mode exchanger is based on a Mach–Zehnder interferometer that performs mode exchange between ${{\rm TE}_0}$ and ${{\rm TE}_1}$ modes. The ${{\rm TE}_1}$ mode modulator consists of a pair of ${1} \times {3/3} \times {1}$ multimode interferometers acting as a mode (de)multiplexer. It only selectively modulates the ${{\rm TE}_1}$ mode while bypassing the ${{\rm TE}_0}$ mode. 32 Gb/s on-off keying (OOK) modulation is successfully demonstrated for both input ${{\rm TE}_0}$ and ${{\rm TE}_1}$ modes. This device can be used as a building block for on-chip multimode interconnect networks.

© 2021 Optical Society of America

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