Hybrid Photonic-Plasmonic Non-blocking Broadband 5x5 Router for Optical Networks

Photonic data routing in optical networks overcomes the limitations of electronic routers with respect to data rate, latency, and energy consumption while suffering from dynamic power consumption, non-simultaneous usage of multiple wavelength channels, and large footprints. Here we show the first hybrid photonic-plasmonic, non-blocking, broadband 5x5 router. The compact footprint (<250 {mu}m2) enables high operation speed (480 GHz) requiring only 82 fJ/bit (1.9 dB) of averaged energy consumption (routing loss). The router supports multi-wavelength up to 206 nm in the telecom band. Having a data-capacity of >70 Tbps, thus demonstrating key features required by future high data-throughput optical networks.