Bragg diffraction of light in a restricted homogeneous system of tunnel-coupled waveguides

A system of tunnel-coupled rectilinear waveguides is studied. The dependence of the number of modes in this system on the number of waveguides N, the distance between the waveguides, and the number of modes in a separate waveguide is considered. It is shown that the modes of the m = N and N + 1 orders in such a system are Bragg modes; i.e., the angle between the direction of their propagation and the system axis is close to the Bragg angle. The effective refractive indices n ^* of these modes change stepwise. The step size Δn ^* is found to be dependent on the distance s between the waveguides and on the number of modes in a separate waveguide. A system of single-mode waveguides with the number of guided modes M = 34 < N = 50 is studied experimentally. It is shown that the Bragg modes of the system lie among the leakage modes of the system and have rather low losses. It is demonstrated that the localization of the Bragg modes among the leakage modes may be favorable for their selection upon light generation.