170 Gbit/s transmission in an erbium-doped waveguide amplifier on silicon

Jonathan D. B. Bradley (1) , Marcia Costa E Silva (2) , Mathilde Gay (2) , Laurent Bramerie (2) , Alfred Driessen (1) , Kerstin Wörhoff (1) , Jean-Claude Simon (2) , Markus Pollnau (1)

1 IOMS - Integrated Optical MicroSystems
2 FOTON - Fonctions Optiques pour les Technologies de l'informatiON

Signal transmission experiments were performed at 170 Gbit/s in an integrated Al2O3:Er3+ waveguide amplifier to investigate its potential application in high-speed photonic integrated circuits. Net internal gain of up to 11 dB was measured for a continuous-wave 1532 nm signal under 1480 nm pumping, with a threshold pump power of 4 mW. A differential group delay of 2 ps between the TE and TM fundamental modes of the 5.7-cm-long amplifier was measured. When selecting a single polarization open eye diagrams and bit error rates equal to those of the transmission system without the amplifier were observed for a 1550 nm signal encoded with a 170 Gbit/s return-to-zero pseudo-random 2^7-1 bit sequence.

Domaines: Optique / photonique

Jonathan D. B. Bradley, Marcia Costa E Silva, Mathilde Gay, Laurent Bramerie, Alfred Driessen, et al.. 170 Gbit/s transmission in an erbium-doped waveguide amplifier on silicon. Optics Express, 2009, 17 (24), pp.22201-22208. ⟨10.1364/OE.17.022201⟩. ⟨hal-00488065⟩