Tunable channel-drop filters consisting of polymeric Bragg reflectors and a mode sorting asymmetric X-junction.

A tunable channel-drop filter as essential component for the wavelength-division-multiplexing optical communication system has been demonstrated, which is based on polymer waveguide Bragg reflectors. For an ordinary Bragg reflector, the filtered signal is reflected toward the input waveguide. Thus an external circulator is required to separate the filtered signal from the input port, though it increases the total footprint and cost. For this purpose, we employed dual Bragg reflectors and a mode sorting asymmetric X-junction. The Bragg reflector exhibited a maximum reflectivity of 94% for a 6-mm long grating, a 3-dB bandwidth of 0.39 nm and a 20-dB bandwidth of 2.6 nm. The mode sorting crosstalk in asymmetric X-junction was less than -20 dB, and linear wavelength tuning was achieved over 10 nm at the applied thermal power of 377 mW.

Arrayed waveguide collimators for integrating free-space optics on polymeric waveguide devices.

Array-type optical devices are important for wavelength-division multiplexing optical communication system to achieve small footprint, mass production, and reliability. For fabricating transmitter module in an array configuration, it is difficult to achieve a passive alignment of isolator, collimating lens, and laser diode. To facilitate array isolator integration, a waveguide collimator is proposed in this work by using a low-contrast, large-core polymer waveguide. The diffraction of a guided mode propagating through a free-space region is suppressed by enlarging the guided mode. The fiber coupling loss due to the enlarged mode was overcome by incorporating an adiabatic taper structure. The excess loss of waveguide collimator including the loss through a 400-µm free-propagation region was less than 1.0 dB.

Characterizations of realized metal-insulator-silicon-insulator-metal waveguides and nanochannel fabrication via insulator removal.

We investigate experimentally metal-insulator-silicon-insulator-metal (MISIM) waveguides that are fabricated by using fully standard CMOS technology. They are hybrid plasmonic waveguides, and they have a feature that their insulator is replaceable with functional material. We explain a fabrication process for them and discuss fabrication results based on 8-inch silicon-on-insulator wafers. We measured the propagation characteristics of the MISIM waveguides that were actually fabricated to be connected to Si photonic waveguides through symmetric and asymmetric couplers. When incident light from an optical source has transverse electric (TE) polarization and its wavelength is 1318 or 1554 nm, their propagation losses are between 0.2 and 0.3 dB/µm. Excess losses due to the symmetric couplers are around 0.5 dB, which are smaller than those due to the asymmetric couplers. Additional measurement results indicate that the MISIM waveguide supports a TE-polarized hybrid plasmonic mode. Finally, we explain a process of removing the insulator without affecting the remaining MISIM structure to fabricate ~30-nm-wide nanochannels which may be filled with functional material.

Hybrid plasmonic waveguide for low-loss lightwave guiding.

A hybrid plasmonic waveguide structure is proposed and fabricated for low-loss lightwave guiding along a metal stripe core. By embedding Au stripe in dual slab waveguides with high refractive-index contrast, the field of the guided mode is confined more in the two dielectric core layers. Thus, the propagation loss is significantly reduced. The guided mode is like a combination of a fundamental long-range surface plasmon polariton strip mode and a dual symmetric dielectric slab mode. We fabricate 5 nm-thick Au stripe optical waveguides and measure the optical properties at a wavelength of 1.31 microm. The propagation loss is less than 1.0 dB/cm with the metal stripe width of 1-5 microm.

Double component long period waveguide grating filter in sol-gel material.

An efficient, tunable Long Period Waveguide Grating (LPWG) filter based on a new hybrid sol-gel material is demonstrated. The LPWG exhibits an attenuation of -22 dB and a high temperature sensitivity of ~3.3 nm/ degrees C. At room temperature the device shows an almost polarization independent wavelength. We took the advantage of the UV-curable sol-gel materials and used soft lithography to demonstrate a simple approach of integrating two LPWG filters on the same structure. The gratings were fabricated on the top and on the bottom of the same ridge waveguide and operate at communication wavelengths of 1550 and 1310 nm, respectively.

In-line polarization controller that uses a hollow optical fiber filled with a liquid crystal.

We demonstrate an in-line polarization controller based on a hollow optical fiber filled with a nematic liquid crystal by fabricating thin-film electrodes on the cladding of a fiber. The polarization controller consists of three control sections with fixed optic axes, which operate as phase retarders. The phase retardation in each section is controlled by the magnitude of the applied electric field. The full wave retardation voltage of the polarization controller is approximately 85 V.

Mode-order converter in a multimode waveguide.

A novel device that converts the order of modes in an integrated-optic multimode waveguide was proposed and fabricated. The device consists of two mode splitters and tapered waveguides. Its operation at a wavelength of 1.55 microm was confirmed by observation of the output mode profiles. The cross talk measured by an indirect method was >10.2 dB. The excess loss with reference to a straight multimode waveguide was 1.5 dB, compared with the propagation loss of a straight multimode waveguide.

Fabrication of an integrated optical filter using a large-core multimode waveguide vertically coupled to a single-mode waveguide.

We demonstrate the feasibility of the process for fabricating a single-mode waveguide and a large-core multimode waveguide aligned vertically on the same substrate. Using this process, we propose and demonstrate a filter that drops optical signal propagating in a single-mode waveguide to a multimode waveguide in the specific wavelength interval by a long-period grating. We use perfluorocyclobutane and benzocyclobutane for the cladding and core of the single-mode waveguide, respectively. The large core of the multimode waveguide is made of Norland Optical Adhesive 61. For the grating period of 315.9 um, the fabricated filter has the center wavelength of 1537.7 nm, at which the maximum attenuation is 17.8 dB.

TAG: A Neural Network Model for Large-Scale Optical Implementation.

TAG (Training by Adaptive Gain) is a new adaptive learning algorithm developed for optical implementation of large-scale artificial neural networks. For fully interconnected single-layer neural networks with N input and M output neurons TAG contains two different types of interconnections, i.e., M N global fixed interconnections and N + M adaptive gain controls. For two-dimensional input patterns the former may be achieved by multifacet holograms, and the latter by spatial light modulators (SLMs). For the same number of input and output neurons TAG requires much less adaptive elements, and provides a possibility for large-scale optical implementation at some sacrifice in performance as compared to the perceptron. The training algorithm is based on gradient descent and error backpropagation, and is easily extensible to multilayer architecture. Computer simulation demonstrates reasonable performance of TAG compared to perceptron performance. An electrooptical implementation of TAG is also proposed.