Plasmonic-organic hybrid (POH) modulators for OOK and BPSK signaling at 40 Gbit/s

We report on high-speed plasmonic-organic hybrid Mach-Zehnder modulators comprising ultra-compact phase shifters with lengths as small as 19 mu m. Choosing an optimum phase shifter length of 29 mu m, we demonstrate 40 Gbit/s on-off keying (OOK) modulation with direct detection and a BER < 6 x 10(-4). Furthermore, we report on a 29 mu m long binary-phase shift keying (BPSK) modulator and show that it operates error-free (BER < 1 x 10(-10)) at data rates up to 40 Gbit/s and with an energy consumption of 70 fJ/bit. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America