Patent ID: 6891996

Claim:
A resonant optical modulator assembly, comprising: a. an alignment housing, the housing including a waveguide-alignment groove and a resonator alignment groove; b. a transmission optical waveguide, the waveguide being positioned within the waveguide alignment groove and secured to the alignment housing, the transmission optical waveguide being arranged for transmitting therethrough an optical signal carried by a waveguide optical mode, the transmission optical waveguide also having an evanescent optical coupling segment; c. a resonator, the resonator positioned within the resonator alignment groove and secured to the alignment device, the resonator being arranged for supporting a resonator optical mode, the resonator being positioned so that the resonator evanescently optically couples with the transmission optical waveguide coupling segment; d. an optical modulator, the optical modulator positioned on and secured to the alignment housing, the optical modulator being evanescently optically coupled with the resonator; e. a modulator controller, the modulator controller being operatively coupled to the optical modulator for modulating, in response to an applied control signal, i) a level of optical power transfer through the evanescent optical coupling between the resonator and the optical modulator; ii) a level of optical loss of the optical modulator; or iii) a resonant frequency of the optical modulator thereby enabling controlled modulation of a coupling condition between the transmission optical waveguide and the resonator; and, f. the waveguide-alignment groove and the resonator-alignment groove being arranged so as to reproducibly establish and stably maintain evanescent optical coupling between the transmission optical waveguide and the resonator and wherein the alignment housing reproducibly establishes and stably maintains evanescent optical coupling between the resonator and the optical modulator.