Photonic Crystal Power-splitter Based on Mode Splitting of Directional Coupling Waveguides

Abstract

In the paper, a novel power-splitting scheme based on two dimensional photonic crystal (2D PhC) is proposed. The structure can be divided into three sections, including the input waveguide, coupling region, and output region, and the latter two sections consist of two parallel waveguides placed in proximity. The operation principle of the splitter is that only one of the super-modes splitting from the directional coupler can propagate through coupling region in the frequency range of interest. The radius of air holes next to the guiding region in coupling region is increased to avoid the acute back reflection at the entrance to the input waveguide induced by the modes mismatch between the input waveguide and coupling region. While in output region, the radius of these corresponding air holes is also increased so that the two splitting super-modes have same propagation constants to avoid the coupling between the two output waveguides. Moreover, as the length of coupling region is varied, its influence on the splitting performance is discussed, and it is verified that the relationship between the splitter length and bandwidth has a trade-off.