Robust Miniature Multi-Function, Dense WDM Demultiplexer/Receiver

摘要

The broad goal was to advance the state-of-the-art in WDM receiver technology based on microcavity resonators. In order to do this, design tools need to be developed capable of handling 3D, complex geometries. With such tools, demonstrated 2D designs that are very difficult to fabricate could be replaced by manufacturable 3D designs. These 3D designs place all the precision features as epitaxial layers that are much easier to fabricate vertically than as horizontal features at the same precision. To advance the goal of manufacturable microcavity-based WDM receivers, we: (1) fabricated some prototype 3D designs in a new polymer material, with limited success, (2) converted the CalTech design code to run on the San Diego Tera supercomputer (which required considerable I/O system development), (3) inserted the recently developed memory and cycle-saving Cole non-standard finite-difference algorithm into the Tera code making large-scale 3D designs feasible, (4) began implementing animated visualizations based on an open source package which would make remote visualization of the core computations accessible on generic UNIX/ linux platforms. Continued effort will be needed to make these initial efforts into 'user-friendly' modules usable by other groups.