Compact silica-on-silicon planar lightwave circuits for high speed optical signal processing

Silica-on-silicon planar lightwave circuit (PLC) technology is well established and provides a low loss and stable photonic device platform. However, limitations in size and integration of active components remain. Engineering of the layer structure in silica PLCs to achieve high-index contrast, compact device architectures and monolithically integrated optical nonlinearities is described. Modeling of properties of doped-silica layers provides a design strategy for optimization of waveguide loss and birefringence. Optical nonlinearities in poled silica layers have been demonstrated, and recent work to incorporate these into f