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Polarization management is crucial to the design, implementation, and operation of optical devices. This thesis explores the use of stress engineering for manipulating birefringence in silicon-on-insulator based waveguide systems. Two schemes are proposed: one is to implement polarization insensitive waveguides using a stressed cladding overlayer, the other adapts the polarization diversity approach by introducing novel stress-based polarization splitters. Both theoretical study and experimental demonstrations of stress-based waveguide devices are presented.

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Dr. Ye received her B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering from Carleton University in 2000. She then received her M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. in Photonics from University of Toronto and Carleton University in 2002 and 2007, respectively. Since 2009, Dr. Ye is a professor in Electrical Engineering at Carleton University, focusing on Silicon Photonics research.

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