High-performance GaAs/AlGaAs optical phase modulators for microwave photonic integrated circuits

A high-performance high-speed optical phase modulator for photonic integrated circuit (PIC) use is described. Integration of these optical phase modulators into a real system (COMPASS) is also discussed. The optical phase modulators are based on depletion-edge translation and have experimentally provided optical phase shifts in excess of 60/spl degV/spl middot/mm with approximately 4 dB/cm loss while simultaneously demonstrating bandwidths in excess of 10 GHz.<>