Photonic lightwave circuits

Summary form only given. Photonic lightwave circuits are optical devices comprised of waveguides and sometimes active devices, such as phase shifters, amplifiers, or modulators. This field is immense, including devices from electroabsorption modulated lasers to acoustooptic wavelength add-drops. Because of the limited time, we have chosen to focus on arrayed-waveguide-based and a few other interferometer-based devices. This includes multi/demultiplexers, dynamic gain equalization filters, wavelength add-drops, dispersion compensators, switches, and optical regenerators. It has been claimed for a long time now that photonic lightwave circuits should be cheaper to build in large quantities than their bulls counterparts and thus capture the marketplace. We also discuss cases where this has and has not happened.