The instant disclosure is directed toward integrated-optics-based composite phase controllers that include at least one thermo-optic (TO) phase controller and at least one stress-optic (SO) phase controller, each of which is configured to affect the phase, or other propagation characteristic, of a light signal travelling through a surface waveguide. The SO phase controller can induce a small phase change quickly, while the TO phase controller can slowly induce a larger phase change. Embodiments are particularly well suited for use in waveguide-based resonant elements, such as ring resonators, spectral filters, and the like. Furthermore, photonic systems comprising one or more composite phase controllers can be developed, such as wavelength-tunable lasers for applications such as LiDAR, chemical/biological sensing, medical diagnostics, and optical communications.

An optical neural network is constructed based on photonic integrated circuits to perform neuromorphic computing. In the optical neural network, matrix multiplication is implemented using one or more optical interference units, which can apply an arbitrary weighting matrix multiplication to an array of input optical signals. Nonlinear activation is realized by an optical nonlinearity unit, which can be based on nonlinear optical effects, such as saturable absorption. These calculations are implemented optically, thereby resulting in high calculation speeds and low power consumption in the optical neural network.

An optical modulator has an optical modulation element including optical waveguides and a housing that accommodates the optical modulation element. The housing has a bottom surface wall having a quadrilateral shape in a plan view, first and second long side walls that are connected to two opposite edges of the bottom surface wall, and first and second short side walls, shorter than the long side walls, and connected to two other opposite edges of the bottom surface wall. The optical modulation element is accommodated in a space surrounded by the bottom surface wall and the side walls. The second long side wall has a wall thickness that is equal to or larger than that of the first long side wall, and at least one of the first and second short side walls has a wall thickness that is thinner than that of the first long side wall.

The invention refers to a frequency shifter for heterodyne interferometry measurements, comprising a chip, an input waveguide configured to guide a light beam, at least four phase modulators, each being arranged to receive the light beam from the input waveguide and configured to modulate a phase of the light beam, an output combiner being arranged to let the light beams modulated by each phase modulator interfere, a first output waveguide coupled to the output combiner and configured to receive the modulated light beams constructively interfering at the output combiner, a second output waveguide coupled to the output combiner and configured to receive the modulated light beams destructively interfering at the output combiner, wherein the input waveguide, the phase modulators, the output combiner, the first output waveguide and the second output waveguide are arranged on the chip.

An optical waveguide device includes a substrate on which an optical waveguide is formed, and an object that is disposed on the substrate. The optical waveguide includes a mode conversion/branching portion that converts a mode of a light wave propagating through the optical waveguide and branches the light wave, and the object is disposed to cover a part or the whole of the mode conversion/branching portion or not to cover the mode conversion/branching portion when the substrate is viewed in a plan view. In a case where the object is disposed to cover a part of the mode conversion/branching portion, the object is disposed not to consecutively cover a section over a length of a predetermined value or higher in an advancing direction of a light wave.

A silicon optical modulator is fabricated to have a multi-slab structure between the contacts and the waveguide, imparting desirable performance attributes. A first slab comprises dopant of a first level. A second slab adjacent to (e.g., on top of) the first slab, comprises a doped region proximate to a contact, and an intrinsic region proximate to the waveguide. The parallel resistance properties and low overlap between the highly doped silicon and optical mode pigtail afforded by the multi-slab configuration, allow the modulator to operate with reduced optical losses and at a high speed. Embodiments may be implemented in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer or in micro-ring resonator modulator configuration.

One illustrative backscattering generator disclosed herein includes a low-reflection waveguide structure, a slot waveguide structure comprising a first waveguide, a second waveguide and a slot located between the first waveguide and the second waveguide, and a variable direction coupler operatively coupled to the low-reflection waveguide structure and the slot waveguide structure.

An optical module includes: a Peltier module; an optical semiconductor element mounted on the Peltier module; and a driver that drives high-frequency lines of the optical semiconductor element. The optical semiconductor element includes: optical circuits providing a function of an optical interferometer and the high-frequency lines. Cooling performance of the Peltier module in a region in vicinity of the driver is higher than the cooling performance in other regions.

A pluggable optical module according to the present invention includes a pluggable electric connector configured so as to be insertable into and removable from an optical transmission apparatus, and capable of transmitting/receiving a data signal to/from the optical transmission apparatus, a drive unit configured to output first/second driving signals by amplifying the data signal, an optical signal output unit configured to output a first/second optical signal modulated according to the first/second drive signal, a light-intensity monitoring unit configured to monitor intensities of the first/second optical signals, a control unit configured to control a gain of the drive unit so as to adjust a difference between the intensities of the first/second optical signals based on a result of the monitoring by the light-intensity monitoring unit, and a pluggable optical receptor configured so that an optical fiber can be inserted thereinto and removed therefrom, and configured to output the first/second optical signals.

Methods, devices, and systems for processing information are disclosed. An example device may comprise a metastructure comprising a plurality of physical features configured to transform an analog signal according to a kernel of an integral equation. The device may comprise one or more waveguides coupled to the metastructure and configured to recursively supply a transformed analog output signal of the metastructure to an input of the metastructure to iteratively cause one or more transformed analog signals output from the metastructure to converge to an analog signal representing a solution to the integral equation.