| 摘要 |
PURPOSE:To offer a small-sized, inexpensive time-division optical switch which eliminates the need for adjustment and has a low insertion loss by forming a spatial optical switch and an optical storage element (optical memory) of compound semiconductor materials of the same kind and integrating those on a compound semiconductor substrate of the same kind. CONSTITUTION:An incidence-side optical waveguide 3 crosses four optical waveguides 21 to 24 and optical switches 11 to 14 are arranged at the respective points of intersection. The optical waveguides 21 to 24 are linked with optical memories 31 to 34 and cross a projection-side optical waveguide 4, and optical switches 15 to 18 are arranged at the points of intersection. The optical switch parts and optical memories are formed of the compound semiconductor materials of the same kind and integrated on the compound semiconductor substrate of the same kind, and they are all connected by the same optical waveguides, so those elements need not be connected newly with one another and the loss at the connection points in reducible. Further, when the optical switch parts are composed of total reflection type optical switch, etc., the time-division optical switch is realized which has no polarizing direction dependency and is easily connected to optical fibers. |
