Ridge coplanar waveguide for optical amplitude modulation

A novel structure called ridge coplanar waveguide is proposed for Mach-Zhender optical modulator. Numerical modeling using a two-dimensional finite-difference time-domain (2D-FDTD) algorithm has shown that a ridge coplanar waveguide on Y-cut LiNbO/sub 3/ substrate without SiO/sub 2/ buffer layer yields very high efficiency of modulation over a wide frequency bandwidth.