Patent ID: 7130509

Claim:
An optical switch, comprising: a first optical waveguide, the first optical waveguide including an input segment, a transverse-coupling segment, and an output segment; and a second optical waveguide, the second optical waveguide including an input segment, a transverse-coupling segment, and an output segment, the first and second optical waveguides being transverse-coupled at the respective transverse-coupling segments thereof, the input segments of the first and second optical waveguides each being adapted for receiving optical signal power from an optical signal transmission system and transmitting received optical signal power to the respective transverse-coupling segment, the output segments of the first and second optical waveguides each being adapted for receiving optical signal power from the respective transverse-coupling segments and transmitting the optical signal power to the optical signal transmission system, the first and second optical waveguides each comprising a laterally-confined multi-layer dispersion-engineered waveguide structure, the multi-layer waveguide structure including at least one multi-layer reflector stack and at least one active layer, the active layer being adapted for exhibiting varying optical loss or varying modal-index in response to an applied control signal, the multi-layer waveguide structure being adapted so that varying the control signal applied to at least one of the transverse-coupling segments results in optical signal power transfer between the first and second transmission optical waveguides.