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Active plasmonics in WDM traffic switching applications

2012; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 2; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/srep00652

2045-2322

S. Papaioannou, Dimitrios Kalavrouziotis, Konstantinos Vyrsokinos, Jean‐Claude Weeber, Karim Hassan, Laurent Markey, Alain Dereux, Ashwani Kumar, Sergey I. Bozhevolnyi, M. Baus, Tolga Tekin, D. Apostolopoulos, H. Avramopoulos, Nikos Pleros,

Optical Network Technologies

Abstract With metal stripes being intrinsic components of plasmonic waveguides, plasmonics provides a “naturally” energy-efficient platform for merging broadband optical links with intelligent electronic processing, instigating a great promise for low-power and small-footprint active functional circuitry. The first active Dielectric-Loaded Surface Plasmon Polariton (DLSPP) thermo-optic (TO) switches with successful performance in single-channel 10 Gb/s data traffic environments have led the inroad towards bringing low-power active plasmonics in practical traffic applications. In this article, we introduce active plasmonics into Wavelength Division Multiplexed (WDM) switching applications, using the smallest TO DLSPP-based Mach-Zehnder interferometric switch reported so far and showing its successful performance in 4×10 Gb/s low-power and fast switching operation. The demonstration of the WDM-enabling characteristics of active plasmonic circuits with an ultra-low power × response time product represents a crucial milestone in the development of active plasmonics towards real telecom and datacom applications, where low-energy and fast TO operation with small-size circuitry is targeted.