Electrical tuning of birefringence in silicon waveguides

We demonstrate dynamic control of the birefringence in a silicon waveguide. Electrically tunable stress on the waveguide core is induced using an integrated piezoelectric film. We show that the induced birefringence can be used to fine tune the phase mismatch among interacting waves present in parametric nonlinear optical effects. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.