Electro-optic mode switch based on lithium-niobate Mach–Zehnder interferometer

We propose an electro-optic mode switch based on an optical waveguide Mach-Zehnder interferometer fabricated with x-cut lithium niobate by the annealed proton exchange process. The device can switch between the fundamental mode and the higher-order mode with a low driving voltage. Our typical fabricated device, which has a total length of ∼24 mm, shows a mode extinction ratio of ∼35 dB and a 20-dB bandwidth of ∼12 nm at the wavelength 1552 nm, when driven at a voltage of 1.7 V at 26°C. High performance can be obtained at any wavelength in the C+L band with a driving voltage varying by no more than 3 V. The proposed mode switch is easy to fabricate and could find applications in reconfigurable mode-division-multiplexing systems.