Influence of surface defects on Fabry-Perot electro-optic modulators

Abstract

Explicit easy-to-compute expressions have been derived for the transmitted amplitude of a Fabry-Perot electrooptic modulator which take into account the influence that various surface deformations exert on the output response of the system. Three types of surface defects have been considered, namely, gaussian random irregularities, curvature (flexion) and lack of parallelism(tilt). Both the voltage bias and the modulation depth of the electro-optic device have been evaluated and compared with the ideal case with no defects. The tolerances of the departure of the surfaces from perfect flatness have been ranged.