小型化多层双模基片集成波导平衡带通滤波器

针对平衡滤波器小型化和高选择的应用需求,提出两种新型的多层双模基片集成波导平衡带通滤波器。首先详细分析了基于平衡端口馈电的双模基片集成波导谐振器的特性;然后根据谐振模式分布特性,设计了一种输入输出馈线同时在上层双模谐振器上的四阶平衡带通滤波器,下层双模谐振器通过十字交叉槽线结构与上层谐振器耦合,可以实现三个传输零点;又提出一种输入和输出馈线分别在上层和下层双模谐振器上的四阶平衡带通滤波器,上层和下层谐振器通过一个槽线进行耦合,可以实现两个对称的传输零点。基于提出的两种平衡滤波器结构,分别设计了一个中心频率为10 GHz的平衡带通滤波器,并进行加工和测试。测试和仿真结果一致性较好,表明了该结构可以实现小型化和高选择,并且具有很好的共模抑制特性。     

Compact optical fiber curvature sensor based on concatenating two tapers

A low-loss, compact, and highly sensitive optical fiber curvature sensor is presented. The device consists of two identical low-loss fused fiber tapers in tandem separated by a distance L. When the optical fiber is kept straight and fixed, no interference pattern appears in the transmitted spectrum. However, when the device is bent, the symmetry of the straight taper is lost and the first taper couples light into the cladding modes. In the second taper, a fraction of the total light guided by the cladding modes will be coupled back to the fundamental mode, producing an interference pattern in the transmitted spectrum. As the fiber device is bent, visibility of the interference fringes grows, reaching values close to 1. The dynamic range of the device can be tailored by the proper selection of taper diameter and separation between tapers. The effects of temperature and refractive index of the external medium on the response of the curvature sensor is also discussed.     

Compact optical correlator based on one phase-only spatial light modulator

An optical correlator that utilizes one phase-only spatial light modulator (SLM) combined with a mirror is proposed and demonstrated. This system is compressed by displaying the input and filter pattern on different parts of the same SLM. The background noise is separated from the correlation signal by superimposing a high-frequency carrier with the filter pattern except in the zero-frequency regions, which will improve the signal-to-noise ratio in pattern recognition. Our architecture is compact and the cost is relatively low by utilizing only one SLM.     

Wavelength band-rejection filters based on optical fiber fattening by fusion splicing

A novel method to fabricate optical fiber band-rejection filters based on optical fiber fattening is presented. In this method, the fiber fattening is realized by applying a standard fusion splicing procedure on bare dispersion-shifted fibers. The method does not require additional special fixtures and can be implemented in any commercial fusion splicer machine. Using this method, we have fabricated short dispersion-shifted fiber filters with less than 3 mm length, >20 dB notch depths, and >100 nm bandwidth.     

Mach-Zehnder interferometers assembled with optical microfibers or nanofibers

We demonstrate Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZI) assembled using optical microfibers or nanofibers (MNFs) drawn from silica fibers and tellurite glasses. As-assembled MZIs, with dimensions of tens to hundreds of micrometers, show good interference fringes with extinction ratios of approximately 10 dB. The path-length difference of the MZI can be tuned by micromanipulation under an optical microscope. The MNF-assembled MZIs demonstrated here show advantages of easy fabrication, in situ tunability, and compact size.     

Wideband tunable fiber short-pass filter based on side-polished fiber with dispersive polymer overlay

It is known that dispersive fiber has an LP01 mode cutoff wavelength that acts as a wavelength filter. With a dispersive polysiloxane polymer overlay on a side-polished single-mode fiber, an in-line tunable fiber short-pass filter with a tuning range of approximately 400 nm (1250-1650 nm) and a temperature variation of 15 degrees C was demonstrated. The rejection efficiency was greater than 50 dB, whereas the insertion and polarization-dependent losses were below 0.26 and 0.09 dB, respectively.     

Ultrasensitive refractive-index sensors based on rectangular silica microfibers

We demonstrate an ultrasensitive refractive-index (RI) sensor utilizing the polarimetric interference of a rectangular silica microfiber. The measured sensitivity is as high as 18,987 nm/RIU (refractive-index unit) around the RI of 1.33, which is 1 order of magnitude higher than that of the previously reported microfiber devices. Theoretical analysis reveals that such high sensitivity not only is originated from the RI-induced birefringence variation but also relies on the unique birefringence dispersion property for the rectangular microfiber. We predict that the sensitivity can be enhanced significantly when the group birefringence approaches zero.     

Compact optical function generator

We demonstrate the use of a nonlinear photonic crystal to generate a harmonic comb and an ultrabroad-band acousto-optic modulator for the field amplitudes and phases of the comb to succeed in synthesizing femtosecond and subfemtosecond optical field waveforms. Nonsinusoidal fields of various shapes are synthesized and verified using shaper-assisted linear cross-correlation. The compact all-solid-state system could lead to the realization of a portable arbitrary optical waveform synthesizer that is analogous in many aspects to an RF function generator.     

Compact planar optical correlator

A compact planar configuration for performing optical correlation is described. It comprises two pairs of identical holographic lenses and a holographic filter. Each pair of lenses is recorded on a single substrate; together the lenses perform exact Fourier transformation. The light between the lenses propagates inside the substrate by total internal reflection. The design and recording considerations for each of the elements along with experimental results for the overall planar correlator are presented.     

Indexed optical composite filters

A new technique called indexed composite filters (ICFs) for multiple object pattern recognition is proposed. Contrary to the usual so-called composite filters, the proposed ICF offers the possibility to identify which object of the learning class is detected at the output. The major advantage of ICF is that the output gives for every object detected two correlation peaks encoding the position and identity of the detected object. Computer simulation results are given using alphabetic input scenes that illustrates the efficiency of the proposed method.     

Compact optical microfiber phase modulator

A compact optical microfiber phase modulator with MHz bandwidth is presented. A micrometer-diameter microfiber is wound on a millimeter-diameter piezoelectric ceramic rod with two electrodes. When a voltage is applied to the piezoelectric ceramic, the rod is strained, leading to a phase change along the microfiber; because of the small size, the optical microfiber phase modulator can have as high as a few MHz bandwidth response.     

Hybrid Mach-Zehnder interferometer and knot resonator based on silica microfibers

We propose and demonstrate an all-fiber high Q Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI)-coupled microknot resonator (MZKR) structure using optical microfibers drawn from silica fibers. The experimental results show that this microfiber-based structure achieved a high Q factor of ∼ 15,000 and good interference fringes with extinction ratio of up to ∼ 15 dB. By optimizing the loop-length of the microfiber knot and the optical path-difference of the MZI, the desired MZKR with higher Q factor and better extinction ratio could be obtained. A series of integrated all-fiber optical devices could be realized based on such a MZKR structure due to its outstanding advantages of easy fabrication, great flexibility, low cost, low loss, etc.     

Multiple narrow bandpass optical filters based on one-dimensional rugate photonic structures of two periodicities

A theoretical analysis of a design of multiple narrow bandpass filters based on one-dimensional (1D) rugate photonic structures with a period jump defect is presented. The optical properties, including transmittance and energy density distributions, are numerically calculated using the propagation matrix method. Our results show that multiple resonance transmission modes are produced when the period jump defect is introduced into the 1D rugate film. Both blueshift and redshift of the stop band of the rugate structure and wavelengths of resonant modes are observed, depending on the change of period jump. The number, the wavelengths, the band intervals, and the intensities of multiple resonance transmission modes are tunable by adjusting structure parameters of the rugate structure. Experimental feasibility of the proposed multiple narrow bandpass optical filters using the technique of glancing angle deposition is also discussed.     

Bandwidth tuning of hybrid liquid-crystal Šolc filters based on an optical cancelling technique

We demonstrate that in addition to their role in tuning the wavelength of an N-stage hybrid liquid-crystal Šolc filter, liquid-crystal cells can also be used to vary the transmission bandwidth of such filter around any of the tuned wavelength. This bandwidth tuning is based on the variation of the number of stages by what we call here an “optical cancelling technique”. This is achieved by varying the birefringence of the liquid-crystal cells whose optical path difference switches between two particular values. We show that for a 10-stage filter and at λ_i = 1.532 μm, the calculated 3-dB bandwidth varies from 2.6 to 11.8 nm when the number of “optically-cancelled” hybrid plates increases from 0 to 8. During the tuning process, the contrast ratio remains equal to that of the equivalent classical Šolc filter.     

On-chip optical filters with designable characteristics based on an interferometer with embedded silicon photonic structures

We demonstrate chip-scale flat-top filters at near-IR wavelengths using negative index photonic crystal based Mach-Zehnder interferometers. Supported by full three-dimensional numerical simulations, we experimentally demonstrate a new approach for engineering high-pass, low-pass, bandpass, and band-reject filters, based on designing the photonic band diagram both within the bandgap frequency region and away from it. We further show that our approach can be used to design filters that have tunable multilevel response for different sections of the spectrum and for different polarizations. This configuration enables deterministic control of the bandwidth and the rejection ratio of filters for integrated photonic circuits.     

Doubly resonant single-layer bandpass optical filters

A bandpass filter based on guided-mode resonance effects in a single-layer periodic waveguide is presented. Strong refractive-index modulation is used to support the excitation of a resonance pair in which leaky waveguide mode TE0 is excited by the second diffraction order and TE2 by the first diffraction order. It is shown that one resonance provides a broad low-transmission band, whereas the other supplies the transmission peak through its asymmetrical line shape. A bandpass filter with central wavelength at 1.55 microm is presented to demonstrate this concept.     

Vertically coupled photonic crystal optical filters

A novel design of optical filters, based on the vertical coupling between channel waveguides and photonic crystal microcavities, is proposed. The choice of channel waveguides can be arbitrary because of the flexibility of the device geometry, which makes it possible to utilize conventional low-loss waveguides. The separation between waveguides and microcavities, which determines filter bandwidths and drop efficiencies, can be accurately controlled by material growth (or deposition). The filters might also be switchable, e.g., by mechanical movements of microcavities. An example of a reflection-type optical filter is demonstrated in numerical experiments using the finite-difference time-domain method.     

Defect-induced failure of optical coating filters

Optical filters composed of Ag, Al₂O₃, and ZnSe films were prepared on BK7 substrates by evaporation. By employing spectrophotometer, microscope, scanning electron microscope (SEM), and energy dispersive spectrum (EDS) analysis, the moisture-dependent stability of the samples was tested. The experimental results revealed that filter failure often occurs initially at defect sites. Small sputtering particles and pinhole are found to be two types of defects that induced the optical coating filter failure. The mechanisms of the defect-induced failure of the filters also are discussed in the article.