Author:
Liu Qing-Hai,Pan Pan,You Jin,Zhang Jia-Shun,Wang Ya,Wang Yu-Ting,Wang Liang-Liang,An Jun-Ming,Cui Da-Jian,Zhou Lang,Chen Wei
Abstract
Abstract
A four-stage cascaded variable optical attenuator (VOA) with a large attenuation range is presented. The VOA is based on Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) and fabricated in the silica-based planar lightwave circuit (PLC) platform. The thermo-optic effect is used to achieve intensity modulation. The measured maximum attenuation of the four-stage cascaded VOA is 88.38 dB. The chip is also tested in a quantum key distribution (QKD) system to generate signal state and decoy states. The mean photon number after attenuation of the four-stage cascaded VOA is less than 0.1, which can meet the requirement of QKD.
Subject
General Physics and Astronomy