Kap-Joong Kim

Controlling temperature dependence of silicon waveguide using slot structure.

We show that the temperature dependence of a silicon waveguide can be controlled well by using a slot waveguide structure filled with a polymer material. Without a slot, the amount of temperature-dependent wavelength shift for TE mode of a silicon waveguide ring resonator is very slightly reduced from 77 pm/ degrees C to 66 pm/ degrees C by using a polymer (WIR30-490) upper cladding instead of air upper cladding. With a slot filled with the same polymer, however, the reduction of the temperature dependence is improved by a pronounced amount and can be controlled down to -2 pm/ degrees C by adjusting several variables of the slot structure, such as the width of the slot between the pair of silicon wires, the width of the silicon wire pair, and the height of the silicon slab in our experiment. This measurement proves that a reduction in temperature dependence can be improved about 8 times more by using the slot structure.

Si micro-ring MUX/DeMUX WDM filters

We demonstrate 3rd order micro-ring filters, 100 GHz-spaced 16 channels and 50 GHz-spaced 32 channels. Fabrication-induced resonant wavelength errors, σ = 0.237 nm, and temperature-dependent wavelength shift, 0.043 nm/°C tolerable to ΔT>10 °C, has been measured on filters based on the fundamental TM mode. The problem of CMOS-compatible photolithography is solved, while maintaining a small radius, R = 9 μm. As some dummy channels are arranged, it is shown that an on-chip optical network for many cores CPU can be constructed by 16 channel ring filters with the currently available technology.

Enhancing alignment tolerance of silicon waveguide by using a wide grating coupler.

We fabricate a 20 um wide grating coupler for a single-mode thermally-expanded-core (TEC) fiber, in order to enhance positional tolerance in alignment. The minimal coupling loss is measured at 5 dB per facet and the optical 3 dB bandwidth is measured at 40 nm. The 3 dB alignment tolerance is measured at +-7.5 microm in horizontal direction and +290 microm in vertical direction. The 1 dB alignment tolerance is measured at +-4.2 microm in horizontal direction and +125 microm in vertical direction. The alignment tolerance is enhanced twice in horizontal direction and four times in vertical direction, compared with the coupling of a standard single-mode fiber to a standard 10 microm wide grating coupler which is also fabricated in this experiment.

Adjusting resonant wavelengths and spectral shapes of ring resonators using a cladding SiN layer or KOH solution.

It is shown that the resonant frequencies and the transmission spectra of ring resonators can be adjusted by depositing or etching the cladding nitride layer on the ring waveguide without introducing an extra loss or extra variations of channel spacing. The cladding nitride layer increases the minimum width of the gap in the coupling region to larger than 150nm which makes it possible to consider photolithography instead of E-beam lithography for the typical design rule of ring filters. KOH silicon etching can also adjust not only the resonance frequencies but also coupling coefficients with a small sacrifice of guiding loss.

Critical side channel effects in random bit generation with multiple semiconductor lasers in a polarization-based quantum key distribution system

Most polarization-based BB84 quantum key distribution (QKD) systems utilize multiple lasers to generate one of four polarization quantum states randomly. However, random bit generation with multiple lasers can potentially open critical side channels that significantly endangers the security of QKD systems. In this paper, we show unnoticed side channels of temporal disparity and intensity fluctuation, which possibly exist in the operation of multiple semiconductor laser diodes. Experimental results show that the side channels can enormously degrade security performance of QKD systems. An important system issue for the improvement of quantum bit error rate (QBER) related with laser driving condition is further addressed with experimental results.

Polarization-independent electromagnetically induced transparency-like transmission in coupled guided-mode resonance structures

We present two photonic systems that make it possible to realize polarization-independent electromagnetically induced transparency based on guided-mode resonances. Each system is composed of two planar dielectric waveguides and a two-dimensional photonic crystal. Using finite-difference time-domain simulations, we demonstrate that by coupling the two guided-mode resonances with low- and high-quality factors, a narrow transparency window is generated inside a broad background transmission dip produced by the guided-mode resonances. We also show that the time delay that occurs when light beams pass through the proposed systems can be controlled by adjusting the distance between the two waveguides.

Experimental filtering effect on the daylight operation of a free-space quantum key distribution

One of the challenges of implementing free-space quantum key distribution (QKD) systems working in daylight is to remove unwanted background noise photons from sunlight. Elaborate elimination of background photons in the spectral, temporal, and spatial domains is an indispensable requirement to decrease the quantum bit error rate (QBER), which guarantees the security of the systems. However, quantitative effects of different filtering techniques and performance optimization in terms of the secure key rate have not been investigated. In this study, we quantitatively analyze how the performance of the QBER and the key rates changes for different combinations of filtering techniques in a free-space BB84 QKD system in daylight. Moreover, we optimize the conditions of filtering techniques in order to obtain the maximum secure key rate.