Micromechanically active reconfigurable optical add-drop filters
AssigneeLucent Technologies Inc.
InventorsFrieder Heinrich Baumann, Mihaela Dinu, Howard Roy Stuart, James Albert Walker
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Abstract
In accordance with the invention, a tunable, reconfigurable optical add-drop filter comprises a pair of optical waveguides optically coupled by a microring or microdisk resonator wherein the coupling distance between the resonator and at least one of the waveguides is micromechanically controllable. With this arrangement, the degree of coupling can be tuned after fabrication to provide high level extinction of dropped wavelengths and the filter can be dynamically reconfigured. Advantageously, laser radiation is provided to tune the resonant wavelength.
Claims6
A reconfigurable optical add-drop filter comprising:
- first and second optical waveguides;
- a ring or disk optical resonator for optically coupling together the first and second waveguides, the resonator disposed adjacent each waveguide;
- and
- an electrode adjacent at least one of the waveguides for electrostatically moving the waveguide toward or away from the resonator, thereby controlling the optical coupling between the waveguide and the resonator.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.