Design and analysis of trench-assisted leaky channel waveguide for high power applications

Abstract

We purpose a leaky channel waveguide design that supports a single guided mode. The waveguide works on the principle of higher-order mode discrimination. The cladding of waveguide is formed by alternate low and high index regions, which helps to leak out of higher-order modes while retaining the fundamental mode over the entire length of the waveguide. The Structure is analysed by the finite element method ’Comsol Multiphysics’ and the leakage losses of the modes along with effective mode area have been calculated. We show that a waveguide formed in silica with core width 6 µm can be designed to exhibit single mode operation at 1550 nm wavelength. The Fundamental loss E11 = 0.076 dB/mm and the higher order loss E21 = 11.4 dB/mm with the rectangular core area as large as 50 µm2. Such large-core-area waveguide structure efficiently suppresses unwanted non-linear optical effects and is suitable for high power devices such as high power Waveguide Laser and Amplifier.