Programmable optical wave form shaper on a microchip

Abstract

This letter reports a device for in-fiber programmable optical pulse shaping, that consists of a chirped fiber grating and a micromachined array of Si actuators integrated on a 1×5 mm21×5mm2 chip. The pulse spectrum is longitudinally imaged inside a chirped fiber Bragg grating, thus permitting spectral components to be accessed inside the fiber by individual actuators. The demonstration of controlled optical pulse spectrum and temporal-width changes shows that the silicon microactuators, fabricated using a standard lithographic process, can tune the local refractive index of the grating by inducing localized fiber core strain gradients at a rate of >1 μ>1μStrain per 1 mW1mW of actuator driving power.