Objective

"Integrated optics" refers to the science and engineering of photonic devices which are made using microfabrication techniques similar to those used for making integrated circuits (IC) in microelectronics. Unlike ICs which use electrons and metal interconnects to connect the different functional devices, integrated optics use photons and optical waveguides to connect the different optical functional elements integrated on the chip. By using photons instead of electrons, the transmission and switching of higher bandwidth signals are no longer limited by the resistance-capacitance time constants which fundamentally limit the speed of electronics. This course covers the theory of optical waveguides, and the basic functional elements for integrated optics. It covers both passive elements (such as waveguide splitters, multimode interferometers and filters) and active elements (such as optical modulators, optical switches, semiconductor lasers and optical amplifiers and detectors). It also covers fundamental concepts (e.g. dispersion, optical nonlinearities, pulse propagation) which are important for understanding the performance of integrated optics and optical signal transmission in optical communication systems. The course will enable students to understand the present day applications of integrated optics in optical communication systems and their future use for high speed optical interconnects in high speed computers.

Syllabus

• Introduction
• Basic Optics
• Optical Waveguides
• Optical Design Methods
• Signal transmission in waveguides
• Passive Functional Elements
• Active Functional Elements

Learning Outcome

• Understand why photonics is important for communications and future computing systems
• Ability to design single mode channel waveguides using analytical and approximate methods
• Write programs for the numerical analysis of optical waveguides and simple subsystems using Matlab
• Ability to design integrated optics based subsystems and communication systems

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