Silicon photonics core-, wavelength-, and polarization-diversity receiver

A seven-core optical fiber, each core carrying two wavelength channels, is coupled to a novel silicon photonic integrated circuit (PIC). The silicon PIC uses grating couplers, Mach-Zehnder interferometers, and photodiodes to demultiplex and receive both polarizations of all 14 signals. We demonstrate less than 10-9 bit-error-rate reception of polarization-scrambled 5-Gb/s on-off keyed signals.