Abstract
We have investigated the properties of TM polarized light in planar photonic crystal waveguide structures, which exhibit photonic band gaps for TE polarized light. Straight and bent photonic crystal waveguides and couplers have been fabricated in silicon-on-insulator material and modelled using a 3D finite-difference-time-domain method. The simulated spectra are in excellent agreement with the experimental results, which show a propagation loss as low as 2.5+/-4 dB/mm around 1525 nm and bend losses at 2.9+/-0.2 dB for TM polarized light. We demonstrate a high coupling for TM polarized light in a simple photonic crystal coupler with a size of ~ 20 m x 20 m. These promising features may open for the realization of ultra-compact photonic crystal components, which are easily integrated in optical communication networks.
Highlights
The recent progress in the design of planar photonic crystal waveguides (PhCWs) has paved the way for exploitation of low-loss propagation in 2D-patterned PhCWs [1,2]
The measured average loss per bend in the range 1540-1670 nm is found to 2.9±0.2 dB. This is a significant improvement of the bend loss compared to the bend loss of 7.2±0.5 dB per bend that we found from additional measurements performed on PhCWs, which contained unmodified bends
We have investigated TM mode propagation in planar PhCWs
Summary
The recent progress in the design of planar photonic crystal waveguides (PhCWs) has paved the way for exploitation of low-loss propagation in 2D-patterned PhCWs [1,2]. One important goal is to determine the useful bandwidth of the photonic crystal guiding effect by comparing numerical calculations with experimental transmission spectra. Very little attention has been devoted to investigate the propagation of TM polarized light in such PhCWs, since there is no bandgap for this polarization and, the waveguide should not support leakage-free guidance. In this paper we present extensive experimental and numerical investigations of the propagation of TM polarized light in PhCW structures exhibiting a bandgap for TE polarized light. In contrast with the naive expectation we find low propagation and bend losses for TM polarized light
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