Directional coupler using gap plasmon waveguides

Here, we demonstrate that efficient nano-optical couplers can be developed using closely spaced gap plasmon waveguides in the form of two parallel nano-sized rectangular slots in a thin metal film or membrane. Using the rigorous numerical finite-difference and finite element algorithms, we investigate the physical mechanisms of coupling between two neighboring gap plasmon waveguides and determine typical coupling lengths for different structural parameters of the coupler. Special attention is focused onto the analysis of the effect of such major coupler parameters, such as thickness of the metal film/membrane, slot width, and separation between the plasmonic waveguides. Detailed physical interpretation of the obtained unusual dependencies of the coupling length on slot width and film thickness is presented based upon the energy consideration. The obtained results will be important for the optimization and experimental development of plasmonic sub-wavelength compact directional couplers and other nano-optical devices for integrated nanophotonics.     

Enhanced refractive index well-confined planar and channel waveguides in KTiOPO<Subscript>4</Subscript> produced by MeV C<Superscript>3+</Superscript> ion implantation with low dose

We report on the fabrication and characterization of planar and channel waveguides in KTiOPO₄ crystals by 6.0 MeV C³⁺ ion implantation with the dose of 1×10¹⁴ ions/cm². The dark mode spectroscopy of the planar waveguide was measured using a prism coupling arrangement. An increase of the both n _x and n _y refractive indices induced by the annealing after implantation is believed to be responsible for waveguide formation. The bright near-field intensity distribution of the transverse-electric and transverse-magnetic modes in the annealed channel waveguide was collected and studied by end-coupling method.     

Fs-Laser structuring of ridge waveguides

Thin films made by PLD from Er:ZBLAN and Nd:Gd₃Ga₅O₁₂ are micro machined to form optical wave guiding structures using Ti:sapphire and Yb:glass fiber laser radiation. For the manufacturing of the ridge waveguides grooves are structured by ablation using femtosecond laser radiation. The fluence, the scanning velocity, the repetition rate, and the orientation of the polarization with respect to the scanning direction are varied. The resulting structures are characterized using optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. Damping and absorption coefficients of the waveguides are determined by observing the light scattered from the waveguides due to droplets in the thin films and the surface roughness of the structured edges. To discriminate between damping due to droplets and the structured edges, damping measurements in the non-structured films and the structured waveguides are performed. Ridge waveguides with non-resonant damping losses smaller than 3 dB/cm are achieved. Due to the high repetition rate of the Yb:glass fiber laser, the manufacturing time for one waveguide has been decreased by a factor of more than 100 compared to earlier results achieved with the Ti:sapphire laser.     

Reconstruction of internal waves in oceanic waveguides

Reconstruction of the temporal variability of an intense internal wave field is studied by a numerical experiment. The inverse problem is solved using the data on the frequency shifts of the maxima of the inverted wave field. The influence of the amplitude of the internal wave on the efficiency of reconstruction is analyzed.     

The directional emission sensitivity of photonic crystal waveguides to air hole removal

To obtain highly directional light output from photonic crystal waveguides (PCWs), the emission characteristics of the narrow-width waveguide structures are investigated by tailoring the geometry of the exit sides. The local structural deformations in the form of air hole removal from the triangular-lattice photonic crystal (PC) show the effectiveness of the previously proposed approach that was implemented by us for another type of PC. The spatial broadening of the beam is greatly suppressed. With the modified waveguide exits, highly directional emissions with small side lobes are achieved. The frequency dependency of the directional emissions is evaluated. We show that the divergence angles of the beams depend linearly on the wavelength for a regular type of PCW but the modified PCW exits have local minima with respect to wavelength in terms of the divergence angle. The present work may prove to be helpful in the design of couplers and edge-emitting lasers and in the implementation of free-space optical communications.     

Fully-connected networks with local connections

Fully-connected mesh networks with local connections are described. Each connector links only nearest neighbors of the node lattice and carries enough passive pass-through vias to provide direct one-to-one links between all the nodes. If the nodes form a one-dimensional ring, then each connector must contain at least N(N−1)/2 physical channels. However, if the nodes are arranged in a d-dimensional hyper-torus, the number of channels per connector drops to N(N ^1/d −1)/2, which scales much more favorably at large N. Such arrangements can provide fully-meshed connectivity when parts of the network are physically inaccessible or when the network needs to be scaled up in a modular fashion.     

The influence of wire shape on surface plasmon mode distribution

The influence of the nanowire shape on the excitation of surface plasmon polaritons at metallic nanowire arrays is studied numerically. For a system of silver nanowires housed on a polymer substrate, nanowires with rectangular and elliptical cross sections are compared. It was found that in the case of rectangular nanowires the excitation efficiency is higher for surface plasmons at the polymer–metal interface than for surface plasmons at the air–metal interface. Conversely, in the case of elliptical nanowires the air–metal plasmon modes are stronger. Further, it is noted that the nanowire shape directly influences the position of the surface plasmon resonance.     

Refractive index change mechanisms in femtosecond laser written ceramic Nd:YAG waveguides: micro-spectroscopy experiments and beam propagation calculations

The effect that femtosecond laser filamentation has on the refractive index of Nd:YAG ceramics, and which leads to the formation of waveguide lasers, has been studied by micro-spectroscopy imaging, beam propagation experiments and calculations. From the analysis of the Nd³⁺ luminescence and Raman images, two main types of laser induced modifications have been found to contribute to the refractive-index change: (i) a lattice defect contribution localized along the self-focusing volume of the laser pulses, in which lattice damage causes a refractive-index decrease, and (ii) a lattice strain-field contribution around and inside the filaments, in which the pressure-driven variation of the inter-atomic distances causes refractive-index variations. Scanning near-field optical-transmission and end-coupling experiments, in combination with beam propagation calculations, have been used to quantitatively determine the corresponding contribution of each effect to the refractive-index field of double-filament waveguides. Results indicate that the strain-field induced refractive-index increment is the main mechanism leading to waveguiding, whereas the damage-induced refractive-index reduction at filaments leads to a stronger mode confinement.     

Laser emission in Nd:YVO<Subscript>4</Subscript> channel waveguides at 1064 nm

In this work, we report 1064 nm laser emission in Nd:YVO₄ channel waveguides fabricated by carbon implantation. Typical threshold pump powers (∼808 nm) were ≥45 mW. Maximum conversion efficiency was 11.5% (29.6% slope efficiency), and up to 9 mW of signal was delivered. Sample lengths of 4 mm were sufficient to completely absorb the pump power. The special spectral characteristics of this material such as broad absorption band and superior cross sections compared to the YAG crystal makes it suitable for developing compact sources to be integrated in optoelectronic devices.     

Observation of enhanced beaming from photonic crystal waveguides

We report on the experimental observation of the beaming effect in photonic crystals using experimentally mapped spatial field distributions of energy emitted from a subwavelength photonic crystal waveguide into free-space, rendering with crisp clarity the diffractionless beaming of energy. Our experimental data agree well with our numerical studies of the beaming enhancement in photonic crystals with modulated surfaces. Without loss of generality, we study the beaming effect in a photonic crystal scaled to microwave frequencies and demonstrate the technological capacity to deliver long-range wavelength-scaled beaming of energy.     

Nonlinear interferometry and phase measurements for surface second-harmonic generation in a dispersive geometry

Direct measurement of the phase of the surface nonlinear susceptibility is based on the interference of nonlinear optical signals. Up to now, this has not been possible for Second-Harmonic Generation (SHG) in geometries such as Total Internal Reflection (TIR) due to the refractive dispersion of harmonic and fundamental light created in TIR. We demonstrate two schemes which enable us to overcome this dispersion, leading to interference between two second-harmonic signals generated consecutively by the same laser. The advantages and limitations of the two approaches are discussed. We use this technique to check the theoretical predictions for the nonlinear Fresnel factors for SHG in the TIR geometry.Paper presented at the 129th HE-Heraeus-Seminar on Surface Studies by Nonlinear Laser Spectroscopies, Kassel, Germany, May 30 to June 1, 1994     

Devices and architectures for photonic chip-scale integration

Silicon nanophotonics holds the promise of dramatically advancing the state of the art in computing by enabling parallel architectures that combine unprecedented performance and ease of use with affordable power consumption. This paper presents a design study for a many-core architecture called Corona which utilizes dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) for on- and off-chip communication together with the devices which will be needed to implement such a communication infrastructure.     

Fabrication of pellicle beam splitters for optical bus application

The optical bus architecture for on-board applications requires a number of optical splitters with precise split ratios to route part of the input signal. Since hollow metal waveguide provides well collimated beams with very small gap loss, it opens the possibility of inserting discrete optical beam splitters (taps). The optical tap requires low excess loss, polarization insensitivity, temperature stability, minimized walk-off of the propagating beam, and cost effective manufacturing. By benefiting from the mature interference coating technology for polarization insensitivity and temperature stability, we design a pellicle beam splitter based on a static microelec tro-mechanical system (MEMS) and develop processes to fabricate pellicle splitters using wafer level bonding of silicon and glass substrates, with subsequent thinning to 20 μm. With the approaches described in this paper, we have demonstrated optical beam splitters with excess loss of less than 0.17 dB that operate at a data rate of 10 Gb/s showing a clean eye diagram while providing controlled split ratio and polarization insensitivity. We have demonstrated a high yielding MEMS based silicon processing platform which has the potential to provide a cost effective manufacturing solution for optical beam splitters.     

A terabit capacity passive polymer optical backplane based on a novel meshed waveguide architecture

An optical backplane based on a meshed polymer waveguide architecture enabling high-speed board-to-board optical interconnection is presented. This planar array of multimode polymer waveguides can provide passive strictly non-blocking links between server line cards fitted with optical transmitter and receiver arrays. This architecture offers a scalable and low-cost solution to the bandwidth limitations faced by electrical backplanes and is suitable for PCB integration. The reported backplane demonstrator uses a matrix of 100 waveguides each capable of 10 Gb/s operation to interconnect 10 cards for a total capacity of a terabit per second aggregate data rate in multicast mode. Characterisation of the backplane demonstrator reveals low link losses of 2 to 8 dB for a multimode fibre input and crosstalk values below −35 dB. Error free data transmission at 10 Gb/s is achieved with a power penalty of only 0.2 dB at a bit-error-rate of 10⁻⁹. Additionally, lossless operation of a Gigabit Ethernet link over the backplane is achieved even when using the worst-case highest loss links.     

Zero-averaged refractive-index gaps extension by using photonic heterostructures containing negative-index materials

We show theoretically that the frequency range of the zero-averaged refractive-index gap can be substantially extended in a photonic heterostructure containing negative-index materials. This photonic heterostructure consists of different one-dimensional (1D) photonic crystals. The constituent 1D photonic crystals have to be properly chosen in such a way that their zero-averaged refractive-index gap of the adjacent photonic crystals overlap each other.     

Photonic crystal slow light waveguides with large delay–bandwidth product

In this paper, we propose the use of two two-dimensional photonic crystal line defect waveguides for slow light with large delay–bandwidth product (DBP). One includes air rings localized at each side of the line defect and the other modifies the radius and distance of holes at each side of the waveguide. We show that we can achieve a very flat band corresponding to nearly constant group index over a broad frequency range by adjusting the parameters of the structure. We show further that the group velocity dispersion (GVD) can reach a relatively small amount and the DBP can be more than 0.6 for the first waveguide and 0.34 for the second waveguide. Numerical simulation by the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method demonstrates the propagation of the broadband pulse.     

Dense stars with exotic configurations

In this paper, we consider dense stars with configurations expected from the SU(3)_C×SU(2)_W× U(1) standard model of strong and electroweak interactions. Following a recent suggestion that strange matter, a form of (uds) quark matter, may be the true ground state of hadronic matter, we investigate the prospect for the existence of dense stars consisting partially, or entirely, of strange matter by comparing the relative stability between neutron matter and strange matter. It is found that the restriction on the maximum star mass holds in all cases, including a pure strange star, a pure neutron star, and a neutron star with a quark core. It is also found that the choice of both the bag constantB and the strong coupling constant _s has a decisive effect on the relative stability between strange matter and neutron matter. For currently accepted values of (B, _s), anA= dense starcannot consist entirely,nor partially, of strange matter. Nevertheless, such conclusion may be subject to change if corrections ofO ( _s ² ) or other effects are taken into account. Finally, we use the framework of Tolman, Oppenheimer, and Volkoff to analyze two cases of boson stars: gluon stars and stars consisting of massive scalar particles (massive bosons). It is found that, in the case of gluon stars, the presence of the bag constant in the QCD vacuum yields results very similar to that found in quark stars. On the other hand, soliton stars consisting of massive bosons exist if there is some background pressure which plays the role similar to the bag constant for lowering the matter pressure. The stability problem for both gluon stars and soliton stars is briefly discussed.     

Deeply bound pionic states with the (Σ −,Λ) reaction

We study the reaction ^– +A + (A ^–) with the ^– bound in the nucleus, as a means of producing deeply bound pionic states in nuclei, so far unobserved. The reaction is similar to the (n, p) reaction but, because of the ^–, mass difference, it allows the reaction to occur with smaller momentum transfer, thus increasing the transition probability and reducing the effects of distortion. The ratios of signal to background are one to two orders of magnitude better than in the (n, p) reaction.We would like to thank C. Dover and G. Tamas who helped us to get a perspective of the present and future possibilities of this and other reactions.One of us, J. Nieves wishes to acknowledge a fellowship from the Ministerio de Educatión y Ciencia. This work is partially supported by the CICYT. All the calculations have been done in the Centro Informático de la Universidad de Valencia.