Characteristics of Microring Resonators With Waveguide-Resonator Coupling Modulation

The general output characteristics of high quality factor microring resonators with modulated coupling strengths are derived. The results are applied to the case of a microring integrated with a Mach-Zehnder interferometer coupler to investigate the amplitude, linearity, distortion, and chirp of the output. These modulators can be designed to give low-distortion, high extinction ratio, chirp-free outputs at modulation rates only limited by the maximum modulation rate of the coupler or the free spectral range frequency of the resonator.