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Updated: May 19, 2026

Quasi-light Storage for Optical Data Packets
Published on: February 6, 2014
High-contrast 40 Gb/s operation of a 500 μm long silicon carrier-depletion slow wave modulator
A Brimont1, D J Thomson, F Y Gardes
1Nanophotonics Technology Center, Universitat Politècnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain. abrimont@ntc.upv.es
Abstract:
In this Letter, we demonstrate a highly efficient, compact, high-contrast and low-loss silicon slow wave modulator based on a traveling-wave Mach-Zehnder interferometer with two 500 μm long slow wave phase shifters. 40 Gb/s operation with 6.6 dB extinction ratio at quadrature and with an on-chip insertion loss of only 6 dB is shown. These results confirm the benefits of slow light as a means to enhance the performance of silicon modulators based on the plasma dispersion effect.
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