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A comparison of optically and electronically controlled optical switches

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Abstract

Electronically and optically controlled optical switches are compared with respect to switch energy requirements. Only switches based on optical phase change are treated, since these have the largest flexibility. Further, only switches that preserve input wavelength at the output are considered, due to cascadeability requirements. It is argued that as long as ‘all-optical’ switches need electronically controlled switches for information transfer to the optical signals controlling the all-optical switch, this will compromise any other advantages that the all-optical switch and the corresponding systems might have. A further application for all-optical switches, which currently are orders of magnitude faster than electronically controlled ones, would be in banks of electronically controlled slower all-optical switches which are all-optically multiplexed to drive all-optical switches to data rates not currently achievable by electronically controlled switches. It is argued that such systems will be complex, requiring sophisticated electronic synchronization and being inferior to corresponding wavelength division multiplexing systems. Power dissipation and switch energy are analyzed for two different physical mechanisms for controllably changing the refractive index in the all-optical and electronically controlled optical switches: Pockels and Kerr effects as well as the plasma or free carrier effect and the relative merits of electronically and optically controlled optical switches using these are discussed. It is shown that, in the former case, (Pockels and Kerr effects) using representative data, electronically controlled switches are generally more power efficient than the all-optical counterparts.

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Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges discussions with Dr. Richard Schatz, Dr. Petter Holmström, Associate Prof. Lech Wosinski, Associate Prof. Eilert Berglind as well as partial support by the Swedish Research Council (VR) through its Linnaeus Center of Excellence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Photonics and Microwave Engineering, School of Information and Communications Technology, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), 164 40, Kista, Sweden

    Lars Thylén

  2. Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, CA, 94304, USA

    Lars Thylén

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  1. Lars Thylén
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Correspondence to Lars Thylén.

Appendix: Feynman diagrams for the elastic, lossless parametric processes for EO and OO cases

Appendix: Feynman diagrams for the elastic, lossless parametric processes for EO and OO cases

In general, more nodes in the diagram imply higher order (weaker) interaction. The corresponding transition matrix elements determine the strengths of the interaction but are material dependent, and a general comparison between the EO and OO cases based on the diagrams is not trivial. But in general higher order means weaker interaction.

The Pockels version of the Feynman diagrams above should be understood in terms of the quantization of an LC circuit [14]. Hence, absorption or emission of ‘RF wave quanta’ will effect the phase change of the optical wave.

A difference between Pockels and Kerr cases is that in the former case, the optical phase can follow the RF signal phase, whereas such phase variations are washed out in the Kerr case, as is obvious from the third order polarization representation [15].

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Thylén, L. A comparison of optically and electronically controlled optical switches. Appl. Phys. A 113, 249–256 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-013-7914-x

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