Optically controlled electroabsorption modulators for unconstrained wavelength conversion

We introduce a proof-of-concept, optically controlled, optical switch based on the monolithic integration of a surface-illuminated photodetector and a waveguide electroabsorption modulator. We demonstrate unconstrained wavelength conversion over the entire center telecommunication wavelength band (C band) and optical switching up to 2.5 Gbit/s with extinction ratios exceeding 10 dB. Our approach offers both high-speed, low-power, switching operation and two-dimensional array scalability for the fabrication of chip-scale reconfigurable multichannel wavelength converters.