High efficiency,small size,and large bandwidth vertical interlayer waveguide coupler

Since the advent of three-dimensional photonic integrated circuits,the realization of efficient and compact optical interconnection between layers has become an important development direction.A vertical interlayer coupler between two silicon layers is presented in this paper.The coupling principle of the directional coupler is analyzed,and the traditional method of using a pair of vertically overlapping inverse taper structures is improved.For the coupling of two rectangular waveguide layers,a pair of nonlinear tapers with offset along the transmission direction is demonstrated.For the coupling of two ridge waveguide layers,a nonlinear taper in each layer is used to achieve high coupling efficiency.The simulation results show that the coupling efficiency of the two structures can reach more than 90%in a wavelength range from 1500 nm to 1650 nm.Moreover,the crosstalk is reduced to less than-50 d B by using multimode waveguides at intersections.The vertical interlayer coupler with a nonlinear taper is expected to realize the miniaturization and dense integration of photonic integrated chips.     

Realization of simultaneous balanced multi-outputs for multi-protocols QKD decoding based onsilica-based planar lightwave circuit

Silica-based planar lightwave circuit (PLC) devices can reduce transmission loss and cost in a quantum key distribution (QKD) system, and have potential applications in integration and production. A PLC-based quantum decoding integrated chip for multi-protocols is designed and fabricated, which is composed of variable optical splitters (VOSs), asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometers (AMZIs), and variable directional couplers (VDCs). Balanced pulse-pairs of four outputs are obtained simultaneously with measured delay times of 405 ps and 402 ps, respectively. The chip has advantages in achieving high interference visibility and low quantum bit error rate (QBER).