Silicon In-Phase/Quadrature Modulator with On-Chip Optical Equalizer

We report an in-phase/quadrature modulator with an on-chip optical equalizer on a silicon photonic integrated circuit, capable of generating 56-Gbaud (112-Gb/s) quadrature phaseshift keyed signals. The equalizer provides a 2.5-dB improvement for optical signal-to-noise ratio at a bit-error ratio of 2.4x102.