Interfacing optical fibers and high refractive index contrast waveguide circuits using diffractive grating couplers

Abstract

The interfacing of an optical fiber and a photonic integrated circuit becomes more complex on a high refractive index contrast waveguide platform due to the large mismatch in mode size between the optical fiber mode and the waveguide modes in the integrated circuit. In this paper we review our work in the field of diffractive grating structures, in order to realize a high efficiency, polarization independent, large bandwidth optical interface with high index contrast waveguides fabricated on the silicon-on-insulator platform.