Microelectromechanical switching and buffering of light: New functionalities in optical fibres and waveguides

Modern telecommunications systems commonly rely on optical pulses to transmit data over long distances, but digital electronics is employed for data processing, routing, and storing. Frequent optical - electrical - optical signal conversion is thus required, which is both slow and energy consuming. We are interested in developing new optical fibres and waveguides that will allow us to perform some of these functionalities in the optical domain. In particular, we have developed a class of optical fibres with two suspended light-guiding cores that can be actuated mechanically allowing for all-fibre optical switching by pressure, temperature, electrical current, and electrostatic forces. Using a similar concept we have also developed integrated micro-electromechanically tunable waveguides on a semiconductor chip designed to provide tunable delay of laser pulses by continuously changing the speed of light by at least a factor of two. In this talk, I will describe the basic concepts, theory and models behind these devices and the current state of fabrication and experiments.