WAVELENGTH SWITCHING AND ROUTING USING ABSORPTION AND RESONANCE

A resonator side coupled to a pair of waveguides can switch an optical signal between two ports by means of absorption. The absorptive mecha nism is used to suppress the resonant power transfer, rather than to p romote loss, Thus, the input signal only suffers small attenuation, pr ovided that the mode volumes of the resonators can be made small enoug h. Multiply-coupled resonators lead to improved crosstalk performance for both the ON and OFF switched states. The performance of such devic es are analyzed analytically, and universal switching curves are deriv ed.