Investigation of PLZT based high speed optical switch

An optical switch by Sagnac interferometers (FSI) structure is described in this paper. An analysis shows that the switching properties of the device are polarization-independent. An experimental setup was achieved by using a PLZT electro-optical (EO) ceramic as the control unit. By using this setup, the theoretical analysis model is proved by experiments with different input polarization states. At the same time, the typical performances of the switch realized less than -22dB cross talk and less than 1 mu s switching time. In addition, the Kerr coefficient of the PLZT compound used in experiments was measured about kappa similar to 1.1 x 10(-16) m(2)/V-2, and the insertion loss of it was found increasing rapidly when external electric field is larger than 600KV/m.