Silicon-Organic Hybrid (SOH) Mach-Zehnder Modulators for 100 GBd PAM4 Signaling With Sub-1 dB Phase-Shifter Loss

Abstract: We report on compact and efficient silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) Mach-Zehnder modulators (MZM) with low phase shifter insertion loss of 0.7 dB. The 280 $\mu$m-long phase shifters feature a $\pi$-voltage-length product of 0.41 Vmm and a loss-efficiency product as small as $aU_{\pi}L = 1.0\space\rm{VdB}$. The device performance is demonstrated in a data transmission experiment, where we generate on-off-keying (OOK) and four-level pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM4) signals at symbol rates of 100 GBd, resulting in line rates of up to 200 Gbit/s. Bit error ratios are below the threshold for hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) with 7 % coding overhead, leading to net data rates of 187 Gbit/s. This is the highest PAM4 data rate ever achieved for a sub-1 mm silicon photonic MZM.