Reflection Airy distribution of a Fabry-Pérot resonator and its application in waveguide loss measurement.

Abstract

The reflection Airy distribution (RAD) of a Fabry-Pérot (F-P) resonator is deduced with the consideration of the mode coupling between the cavity resonance field and the initial back-reflected field at the input F-P resonator facet, as well as the influence of the loss/gain factor. A waveguide loss/gain measurement method is proposed based on the measurement of the finesse of the RAD, which is intrinsically free from the influence of the coupling loss and the substrate scattering noise. The waveguide loss can be measured with a simple single-facet coupling setup, considerably reducing the coupling difficulty and the complexity of the measurement system while achieving the same or better measurement accuracy as that of the transmission F-P method.