Design and modelling of photonics devices using electro-optic effect of mach-zehnder interferometers

Abstract

For the last few decades, computing technology has revolutionized from large vacuum newlinetubes to miniature integrated circuits, having up to several billion transistors and other newlineelectronic components in an area equivalent to size of a fingernail. There are many newlineadvantages of electronic components such as abundance of silicon (using which electronic newlinecomponents are manufactured), miniaturization and ease of manufacturing. But, it is very newlinedifficult to grade electronic devices to cope with rising demand for bandwidth, due to newlinelimited parallelism, high energy usage and Joule effect. Optical computing and data newlinetransfer has several advantages over electronic counterpart such as higher performance in newlineterms of speed, higher parallelism, less energy consumption, less heat dissipation, less newlinenoise, more flexibility in layout and less wear. Unfortunately, the technology which is newlineneeded for optical computers is not highly developed yet. Keeping the advantages of optics newlinein view, a number of researchers have utilized the basic properties of several optical newlinedevices such as periodically poled LiNbO3 (PPLN), Erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA), newlineFabry Perot laser diodes (FP-LDs) and Semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) and tried newlineto design optical digital circuits. But, each of these devices suffers from certain limitations newlinedue to which performance of optical digital circuits might get hindered. Lithium niobate newline(LiNbO3) based electro-optic modulator (EOM) appears to be an appealing alternative newlinebecause of its recognizable features of being lightweight, miniature, immune to newlineelectromagnetic interference, wider bandwidth (faster switching times), lower drive power, newlineand implicitly compatible with optical fiber. In addition, LiNbO3 based EOM minimizes newlinethe effect of dispersion, has very low bias-voltage drift rates and stable operation over a newlinewide temperature range. newlineIn this thesis, the electro-optic phenomenon of based MZI is studied and further, newlineusing this MZI as elementary unit, the design construction of OR gate, Excess-3 code newlineconverter,