Properties of an ultrafast all-optical switching window in an integrated silicon-based Mach–Zehnder interferometer

An ultrafast all-optical switch based on the integrated Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) with two arms consisting of identical silicon-on-insulator (SOI) optical waveguides is presented. The operability of the presented interferometer is simulated both for the continue wave (cw) and pulsed probe signals. It is shown that at the output port of the MZI, the switching window of the probe signal is strongly dependent on the energy and duration of the ultrafast control pulse and the SOI waveguide length. In addition, the initial delay time between both two optical waves will significantly affect the optical switching window when a pulsed probe signal wave is used.