Design and simulation of planar electro-optic switches in ferroelectrics

Conceptual design and numerical simulation of two polarization dependent planar optical switches based on the electro-optic effect in ferroelectrics operating at 1.55 μm wavelength are presented. The first design is a 3×3 optical switch based entirely on electro-optic beam steering (prism) elements and ion-exchanged lenses for collimation. The second design is a 1×N optical switch based on a combination of electro-optic beam steering and electro-optic focusing (lens) elements. The scalability of this device has been improved by compensating the in-plane divergence of the laser. Analytical expressions for the dependence of scalability are presented.