eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. University of California Peer Reviewed Title: Photocurrent-assisted wavelength (PAW) conversion with electrical monitoring capability using a traveling-wave electroabsorption modulator Author: Chou, H F Chiu, Y J Keating, A Bowers, J E Blumenthal, D J Publication Date: 02-01-2004 Publication Info: Postprints, Multi-Campus Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/77c7s3d2 Additional Info: Hsu-Feng Chou, John E. Bowers, and Daniel J. Blumenthal, Photocurrent-AssistedWavelength (PAW) Conversion With Electrical Monitoring Capability Using a Traveling-Wave Electroabsorption Modulator IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, VOL. 16, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2004. © 2004 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/ republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. Keywords: cross-absorption modulation, electroabsorption, traveling-wave (TW) device, wavelength conversion, wavelength-division multiplexing Abstract: A new mechanism of cross-absorption modulation is proposed and experimentally demonstrated to assist wavelength conversion using a traveling-wave electroabsorption modulator (TW-EAM). The photocurrent signal generated by the pump propagates along the TW electrodes and changes the absorption of the waveguide, which imprints data to the probe. The photocurrent signal can also be received by an external electronic circuit to provide monitoring capability. This photocurrent-assisted mechanism does not rely on the saturation of absorption and has the potential to reduce the high pumping power required by EAM-based wavelength converters. Using 2.5-Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero data, the conversion range can cover 30 nm in C-band and the lowest power penalty is 0.5 dB.