New Approach to Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) Cell Based on Silicon Waveguides for Nanophotonic Circuits

Abstract

In this chapter, we present a new scheme for Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) struc- ture based on only one 4 (cid:1) 4 multimode interference (MMI) coupler. We design the new MZI cell on the silicon on insulator (SOI) platform. The MZI based on directional coupler and 2 (cid:1) 2 MMI coupler is also investigated in detail. The new MZI cell is a basic building block for photonic applications such as optical quantum gate, optical computing and reconfigurable processors. The numerical simulations show that our approach has advantages of compact size, ease of fabrication with the current complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuitry.