Detailed investigation of self-imaging in multimode photonic crystal waveguides for applications in power and polarization beam splitters

Abstract

Properties of the self-imaging effect based on multimode interference (MMI) in multimode photonic crystal waveguides (PCWs) are investigated and analyzed in detail. By combining photonic band gap (PBG) and total internal reflection (TIR) effects in PCWs, self-imaging phenomena are achieved for both TE and TM polarizations. To observe the images reproduced by this self-imaging phenomenon, finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations are performed on a multi-mode PCW. From these numerical simulations the reproduced images are identified and their positions along the propagation axis are described. We also, present the design and simulation of novel polarization-insensitive power splitter and polarization splitter. The simulation results show that the optimized devices have excellent transmission efficiencies as well as wide operating frequency bandwidths and small structure size. So, the proposed devices are promising and may play an important role in high-density photonic integrated circuits in the future.