Low-Power Electro-Optic Actuators for Large-Scale Programmable Photonic Circuits

Photonic integrated circuits are becoming increasingly more complex, especially with the emergence of programmable photonic circuits. These require many tunable photonic elements, such as electro-optic phase shifters and tunable couplers. We will discuss our progress in compact, low-power silicon photonics actuators based on heaters, liquid crystal and MEMS that can be scaled up to large circuits.