Introduction

A core building block to many Silicon Photonics circuits with a vast variety of applications is a Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI). This building block in the combination with other technologies may be used to create optical communications, switches, adjustable splitters \cite{Chrostowski_2015},  sensors for pressure, flow, aerodynamics \cite{ristic1957}, and within biological, chemical, and environmental industries\cite{liu2012}.  Exploring the physical parameters when designing a MZI enables comprehension into how an MZI is leveraged for these multitude of applications and future possibilities.  MZI's may be cascaded into stages to form a lattice Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter as well and this more advanced application for an MZI will be touched on.

Theory