A simple silica-on-silicon technology-compatible design of 1×8 optical splitter based on field matching Y-branch with S-bend sine taper and arc waveguide

Abstract

A simple technology-compatible design of silica-on-silicon based 1×8 optical power splitter is proposed. The device is based on symmetric Y-branch comprising of S-bend sine taper and S-bend sine arc waveguide. Initially, a symmetric Y-junction based 1×8 optical power splitter is designed, which can deliver the best result in simulated performance. The design is, however, not technology-compatible to be fabricated in silica-on-silicon, and therefore, the design is modified by incorporating a finite gap at the splitting junction, instead of zero-gap. Inclusion of this gap in the design slightly deteriorates the simulated performance of the splitter, however, a relatively better post-fabrication performance is expected in terms of total insertion loss, non-uniformity and the polarization dependent loss. Beam propagation method is applied for this work, where S-bend sine taper and arc waveguides are designed for optimal field matching in each Y-branch section of the optical splitter.