A 1×4 Polymeric Digital Optical Switch Based on the Thermo-Optic Effect

We present a 1 × 4 Y-branch digital optical switch in which S-bend variable optical attenuators are integrated. The S-bend waveguides, which are always introduced to connect the switch and the standard fiber array, are made use of and designed as variable optical attenuators. A compact device with low crosstalk and larger branching-angle is obtained. The device is fabricated on the thermo-optic polymer materials,and the performance of the device is measured. With an applied driving power of less than 200mW, the device has a low crosstalk of less than - 35dB at a wavelength of 1.55 μm.

Analysis and Design for a Micro Mechanical Optical Switch

The mechanical and electric characteristics of a cantilever beam micro opto mechanical switch are studied theoretically,with which the dependence of the flexion on the applied voltage is derived,as well as the formula of the threshold voltage.The applied voltage,having no connection with the width of the beam,is in inverse proportion to the square of the beam's length.The deflection at the beam's tip cannot exceed 1/3 of the distance between two adjacent electrodes.These results are the basis of the switch design and development.

Fabrication and Electromechanical Characteristics of 2×2 Torsion-Mirror Optical Switch Arrays with Monolithically Integrated Fiber Self-Holding Structures

Novel 2×2 torsion-mirror optical switch arrays are fabricated by using the mixed micromachining based on the surface and bulk silicon microelectronics,then are investigated electromechanically in applied direct and alternating electric fields.When the thickness of the elastic torsion beams suspending the aluminum coated polysilicon micro-mirrors of the switches in the arrays is about 1μm,the electrostatic yielding voltages for driving the mirrors to achieve their ON-state are in the range of 270～290V,and the minimum holding voltages for mirrors ON-state are found as 55V or so.Theoretical analysis manifests that the yielding voltage is more sensitive to beam thickness than other design parameters do about the torsion-mirror switch structures.The lifetime can reach 10 8 times.The estimated shortest switching time of the switches at least lasts for less than 2ms.The force analysis on the two kinds of new fiber self-holding structures integrated monolithically in the chip of the optical switch arrays indicates that the structures can feature self-fixing and self-aligning of optical fibers.

FULLERENE POLYMERS WITH TUNABLE OPTICAL PROPERTIES

Light transmission spectra of THF solutions of poly (C-60-co-methyl methacrylate)s and poly(C-60-co-styrene)s continuously red-shift with increasing concentration. Formation of fullerene nanoclusters may be responsible for the unusual spectral shift, with concentration. It has long been scientists' dream to ''tune'' material's properties by simple means, and the C-60-containing polymers represent such a group of novel materials whose optical properties are predictably and reversibly tunable by a simple change in concentration.

A 16×16 Micro Mirror Array for Optical Switches

This paper reports on the design, fabrication,and performance of a high-reflectivity large-rotation mirror array for MEMS （micro-electro-mechanical system） 16 × 16 optical switches. The mirror in the array can enlarge its rotation an- gles up to 90° and keep a steady state to steer the optical signal. According to the large-rotation behavior, an electro- mechanical model of the mirror is presented. By monolithic integration of fiber grooves and mirrors fabricated by a sur- face and bulk hybrid micromachining process, the coarse passive alignment of fiber-mirror-fiber can be achieved. The re- flectivity of the mirror is measured to be 93.1% ~96.3%. The switches demonstrate that the smallest fiber-mirror-fiber insertion loss is 2. ldB using OptiFocusTM collimating lensed fibers. Moreover,only about ＋- 0.01dB oscillating amplitude of insertion loss is provoked after the device is tested for 15min for 5-90Hz in the vertical vibration amplitude of 3mm.

All-optical switching and nonlinear optical properties of HBT in ethanol solution

This paper demonstrates an all-optical switching model system comprising a single pulsed pump beam at 355 nm and a CW He-Ne signal beam at 632.8 nm with 2-（2＇-hydroxyphenyl）benzothiazole （HBT） in ethanol solution. The origins of the optical switching effect were discussed. By the study of nonlinear optical properties for HBT in ethanol solvent, this paper verified that the excited-state intramolecular proton transfer （ESIPT） effect of HBT and the thermal effect of solvent worked on quite different time scales and together induced the change of the refractive index of HBT solution, leading to the signal beam deflection. The results indicated that the HBT molecule could be an excellent candidate for high-speed and high-sensitive optical switching devices.

Optimized design and fabrication of nanosecond response electro optic switch based on ultraviolet-curable polymers

A nanosecond response waveguide electro-optic （EO） switch based on ultraviolet （UV） sensitive polymers of Norland optical adhesive （NOA73） and Dispersed Red 1 （DR1） doped SU-8 （DR1/SU-8） is designed and fabricated. The absorption properties, refractive indexes, and surface morphologies of NOA73 film are characterized. The single-mode transmission condition is computed by the effective index method, and the percentage of optical field distributed in EO layer is optimized to be 93.78 %. By means of spin-coating, thermal evaporation, photolithography, and inductively coupled plasma etching, a Mach-Zehnder inverted-rib waveguide EO switch with micro-strip line electrode is fabricated on a silicon substrate. Scanning electron microscope characterization proves the physic-chemical compatibility between NOA73 cladding and DR1/SU-8 core material. The optical transmission loss of the fabricated switch is measured to be 2.5 dB/cm. The rise time and fall time of switching are 3.199 ns and 2.559 ns, respectively. These results indicate that the inverted-rib wave- guide based on UV-curable polymers can effectively reduce the optical transmission loss and improve the time response performance of an EO switch.

Sub-nanosecond optical switch based on silicon racetrack resonator

We experimentally demonstrate a small-size and high-speed silicon optical switch based on the free carrier plasma dispersion in silicon. Using an embedded racetrack resonator with a quality factor of 7400, the optical switch shows an extinction ratio exceeding 13 dB with a footprint of only 2.2 × 10-3 mm^2. Moreover, a novel pre-emphasis technique is introduced to improve the optical response performance and the rise and the fall times are reduced down to 0.24 ns and 0.42 ns respectively, which are 25% and 44% lower than those without the pre-emphasis.

Multifunctional disk device for optical switch and temperature sensor

A multifunctional surface plasmon polariton disk device coupled by two metal-insulator-metal（MIM） waveguides is proposed and investigated numerically with finite-difference time-domain simulation. It can be used as optical switch and temperature sensor by filling disk with liquid crystal and ethanol, respectively. The simulation results demonstrate that the transmission characteristics of an optical switch can be manipulated by adjusting the radius of disk and the slit width between disk and MIM waveguides. The transmittance and modulation depth of optical switch at 1550 nm are up to 64.82% and 17.70 d B, respectively. As a temperature sensor, its figure of merit can reach 30.46. In this paper, an optical switch with better efficiency and a temperature sensor with better sensitivity can be achieved.

Observation of V-type electromagnetically induced transparency and optical switch in cold Cs atoms by using nanofiber optical lattice

Optical nanofiber(ONF)is a special tool to achieve the interaction between light and matter with ultralow power.In this paper,we demonstrate V-type electromagnetically induced transparency(EIT)in cold atoms trapped by an ONFbased two-color optical lattice.At an optical depth of 7.35,90%transmission can be achieved by only 7.7 pW coupling power.The EIT peak and linewidth are investigated as a function of the coupling optical power.By modulating the pWlevel control beam of the ONF-EIT system in sequence,we further achieve efficient and high contrast control of the probe transmission,as well as its potential application in the field of quantum communication and quantum information science by using one-dimensional atomic chains.

Design and Simulation of Routing-switching Protocol Based on Optical Switch Array

An optical routing-switching technology based on optical switch array is proposed.The characteristics of the blocking and nonblocking networks are analyzed and compared,odd-even sorting network is used to realize optical routing-switching,relative routing-switching protocol is designed.Simulation test under load shows that it can reduce a blocking effectively and enhance an efficiency of switching.Further,it can transfer the processing and switching within parallel computer from electric domain to optical domain. It can make parallel computer coordinating computing and processing at much more higher speed, storing and transmitting even more efficiently.

Optical switching based on the manipulation of microparticles in a colloidal liquid using strong scattering force

This paper demonstrates the realization of an optical switch by optically manipulating a large number of polystyrene spheres contained in a capillary. The strong scattering force exerted on polystyrene spheres with a large diameter of 4.3 μm is employed to realize the switching operation. A transparent window is opened for the signal light when the polystyrene spheres originally located at the beam centre are driven out of the beam region by the strong scattering force induced by the control light. The switching dynamics under different incident powers is investigated and compared with that observed in the optical switch based on the formation of optical matter. It is found that a large extinction ratio of - 30 dB and fast switching-on and switching-off times can be achieved in this type of switch.

Fabrication of high-quality colloidal photonic crystals with sharp band edges for ultrafast all-optical switching

Application of the pressure controlled isothermal heating vertical deposition method to the fabrication of colloidal photonic crystals is systematically investigated in this paper. The fabricated samples are characterized by scanning electron microscope and transmission spectrum. High-quality samples with large transmissions in the pass bands and the sharp band edges are obtained and the optimum growth condition is determined. For the best sample, the transmission in the pass bands approaches 0.9 while that in the band gap reaches 0.1. More importantly, the maximum differential transmission as high as 0.1/nm is achieved. In addition, it is found that the number of stacking layers does not increase linearly with concentration of PS spheres in a solution, and a gradual saturation occurs when the concentration of PS spheres exceeds 1.5 wt.%. The uniformity of the fabricated samples is examined by transmission measurements on areas with different sizes. Finally, the tolerance of the fabricated samples to baking was studied.

Electrically controlled optical switch in the hybrid opto-electromechanical system

To promote the future quantum information technologies, we demonstrate an electrically driven optical switch based on quantum interference in a hybrid opto-electromechanical system, which consists of an opto-mechanical cavity and an external electric circuit. The key element of our scheme is a moveable mirror of cavity as a charged mechanical oscillator capacitively coupled to a fixed charged plate in a variable capacitor. By adjusting the voltage of the capacitor, the displacement of the moveable mirror is modulated, then the cavity field can be electrically turned on or off due to the detuning of the cavity. Based on the cavity induced transparency, the transparency window can be electrically switched on or off by turning on or off the cavity field. Therefore, the susceptibility of the medium in the cavity can be electrically controlled, i.e., the scheme of the electrically controlled absorption switching can be demonstrated. This electrically driven optical switch will excite a development trend and implementation prospect towards the integration and miniaturization of quantum module device in a chip.

Enhancement of modulation depth of an all-optical switch using an azo dye-ethyl red film

The polymethyl methacrylate （PMMA） film doped with an azo dye ethyl-red （ER） film is employed to demonstrate the properties of an all-optical switch by its photoinduced dichroism and birefringence. We show how to enhance remarkably the modulation depth of all-optical switches almost to 100% by using two linear polarization beams： one beam is inclined at 45° with respect to the probing beam and serves as a pumping beam, and the other beam is perpendicular to the probing beam and used as an erasing beam. Furthermore, a maximum-to-minimum output intensity ratio of 2000：1 is achieved in experiment, which is very useful and important for optical storages and image displays.

Properties of DR1/PMMA-co-GMA for High Speed Electro-optical Switch

A non-linear optical（NLO） material was synthesized by means of a simple method.This material can be applied in electro-optical（EO） devices,such as EO switches and modulators.The Disperse Red 1（DR1） was doped in polymethyl-methacrylate-co-glycidyl methacrylate（PMMA-co-GMA） as the NLO active chromophore.The synthesis process and material structure were expressed.The thermal properties,surface morphology and optical characteristics of the material were investigated by means of differential scanning calorimetry（DSC）,thermogravimetric analysis（TGA）,atomic force microscopy（AFM）,and m-lines technique.Using the reflection technique,the value of the electro-optical coefficient γ 33 was measured as 11 pm/V at a wavelength of 1310 nm.An EO switch with nanosecond response based on this material has been fabricated.

Low power all optical switches

In this paper, we propose a new design of all fiber optical switches by using a high finesse ring resonator (RR) side coupled Mach-Zehnder interferometer. We will show that by compensating the total loss in the RR the switching power can be decreased greatly and by loss, compensating the bistability effect in RR can be cancelled and the switching performance can be improved. In addition, we will show that by using Erbium doped fiber for fabricating the RR we can obtain switching power threshold in mW range.

Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal Optical Switches

The dynamic response of molecular orientation, and the temperature and pulse shape dependences of the switching behavior in ferroelectric liquid crystal are described. The switching speed and the surface energy of ferroelectric liquid crystal are given.

All-optical switchings of 3-hydroxyflavone in different solvents

3-hydroxyflavone （3-HF） is an organic molecule with an excited-stated intramolecular proton transfer （ESIPT） effect. All-optical switchings and beam deflections of 3-HF in three kinds of solvents （cyclohexane, ethanol and dimethyl sulfoxide） have been investigated by using the third-harmonic generation （355 nm） of a mode-locked Nd：YAG laser as a pump beam and a continuous-wave （cw） He-Ne laser （632.8 nm） as a probe beam. The nonlinear refractive indices of 3-HF in the three different solvents are determined by using the Z-scan technique under an ultraviolet （UV） pump beam at a wavelength of 355 nm. It has been found that the optical switching and beam deflection effects result from the change in refractive index of 3-HF under the irradiation of the pump beam. On the basis of the analyses of absorption spectra and fluorescence spectra, we conclude that the change in refractive index of 3-HF is due to not the thermal effect but the ESIPT effect of 3-HF under the pump beam. As the ESIPT is exceedingly fast, 3-HF might be an excellent candidate for high-speed optical switching.

Research and Progress of Service Driven Optical Switching Network in China

National R&D activities on optical switching networkare introduced. Optical switching network testbedswere established in China including 3T-net andOBS ring and mesh network test-bed with the supportof national '863' program. As an importantmodule in OPS network, a novel all-optical serialmulticast mode is discussed.