Short Courses

This course teaches the fundamentals of photonic integrated circuits with a focus on the telecomm and datacomm industry.  It starts with the basics of optical waveguides and moves to more and more complex devices.  It describes many state-of-the art devices and explains how they work. Details of the design and process flow are also given. Silicon, InP, and other material platforms are covered. This course assumes a basic knowledge of optics and electronics.

This course should enable you to:

• Gain a deeper understanding of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for telecomm and datacomm.

• Describe the pros and cons of PICs.

• Understand details about the most popular material systems, especially silicon photonics and indium phosphide photonics.

• Learn enough optical waveguide theory to explain many of the phenomena in PICs.

• Discover the issues that PIC designers face.

• Learn the main steps in producing a PIC.

• Get an up-to-date view on PICs in the communication industry.

• Be better able to separate hype from reality with regard to PICs.

This advanced-beginner course is intended for both industry and acadamic participants who want to get a realistic view of PICs in industry today and where they might be going in the next five years. A beginners knowledge of optical communication systems would be very helpful. The participant does not need to know anything about PICs, but some understanding of general optics, such as what is refractive index, is needed.

Christopher R. Doerr earned a B.S. in aeronautical engineering and a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a pilot in the U.S. Air Force. Since joining Bell Labs in 1995, Doerr’s research has focused on integrated devices for optical communication. He received the OSA Engineering Excellence Award in 2002. He is a Fellow of IEEE and OSA. He was Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Photonics Technology Letters from 2006-2008. He was an Associate Editor for the Journal of Lightwave Technology from 2008-2011. He was awarded the IEEE William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award in 2009 and Microoptics Conference Award in 2013. He became a Bell Labs Fellow in 2011. He joined Acacia Communications in 2011 as Associate Vice President of Integrated Photonics.