ABSTRACT
Lithium Niobate is widely used to build various types of light modulators of integrated optic structure. Light modulators with a frequency range of over 40 or 60 GHz are now commercially available with several hundred mW of driving power and optical insertion losses less than several dB. Packaging techniques have also been improved substantially, and recent small-mount modulator elements can be packed into standard rack-mounts with semiconductor devices. A simple way to apply the modulating electric field is to treat the modulator electrode as a lumped capacitor. A method to simultaneously achieve efficient and fast or wideband operation is to reduce the velocity mismatch between the light and modulating waves of the traveling-wave modulator. Using the Bragg diffraction of the guided light by a surface acoustic wave, light deflectors/modulators of several GHz bandwidth have already been experimentally demonstrated.
