Description The GALACTICO photonic technology platform aims to disrupt the transition from 10/40G to Terabit long-haul networks providing new generation 100G and next generation 400G and 1T photonic interfaces.Galactico answers the question of how to make the internet 100 times faster without developing optical networks from scratch.Project objectives:GALACTICO is a Framework Program (FP) 7 European Commission co-funded project.  The project is application-driven and aims to provide a photonic technology platform to disrupt the transition from 10/40 Gb/s to high-capacity Terabit long-haul networks. To achieve this goal, GALACTICO aims to squeeze current bulk and costly 100GbE interfaces into compact and cost-efficient silicon-based photonic integrated circuits. GALACTICO aims to provide future-proof scalability towards TbE by demonstrating fully integrated multi-carrier super-channel coherent transmitters and receivers that deliver a massive amount of aggregate bandwidth being compliant with the grid boundaries posed by NSN FlexiGrid approach. The technical objectives of the project are:• Development of a low-loss Silicon-on-Insulator integration platform for merging GaAs, InP and Si• Fabrication of high-speed and low voltage (3V) GaAs polarization multiplexed IQ modulator arrays• Fabrication of high-speed flip-chip compatible InP photodetectors• Fabrication of low-power electrical consumption (1W) multi-level (up to 6 levels) SiGe modulator drivers and monolithic Ge photodetector arrays• Demonstration of 100 Gb/s PM-QPSK coherent transmitters and receivers for “new-gen” 100G linecards• Demonstration of up to 320 Gb/s single carrier PM-16QAM and PM-32QAM transmitter and receiver • Demonstration of multi-carrier 512 Gb/s and up to 1.28 Tb/s DWDM DP-16/32QAM transmitters and receivers for upcoming 400G and 1T Flexigrid OTN systems• Demonstration of multi-GbE data transport using Telecom Italia test plant