Low-loss subwavelength metal C-aperture waveguide

We present a design of a linear optical waveguide that utilizes a C-shaped metallic nano-aperture that efficiently transports light while maintaining a spot size of lambda/10. The performance of a C-aperture waveguide is superior to both a regular ridge waveguide and other surface plasmon based metal nano-optical waveguides. The energy transport mechanisms are explained by the coupling of an aperture surface resonance and the thickness resonances inside the guide channel. Finite-difference time-domain simulations of gold C-aperture waveguides are performed for a 1.5 microm wavelength incident plane wave. The 1/e decay length in power transmission is predicted to be approximately 2.5 microm. The total power throughput is 1.66 for the 2.55 microm long guide, with an intensity 6 times that of the incident wave at a distance 120 nm from the exit plane, having a spot size of 150 nm.     

Large spot size and low-divergence angle operation of 917-nm edge-emitting semiconductor laser with an asymmetric waveguide structure

GaInAs/AlGaAs comprehensive-strained three-quantum-well lasers with asymmetric waveguide are designed and optimized. With this design, the optical field in the transverse direction is extended, and a semiconductor laser with large spot is obtained. For a 300-μm cavity length and 100-μm aperture device under continuous wave (CW) operation, the measured vertical and horizontal far-field divergence angles are 12.2° and 3.0°, respectively. The slope efficiency is 0.44 W/A and the lasing wavelength is 917 nm.The equivalent transverse spot size is 3 μm for the fundamental transverse mode, which is a sufficiently large value for the purpose of coupling and manipulation of light.     

Circular grating coupler for creating focused azimuthally and radially polarized beams

We show a planar optical circuit design that takes light from an input waveguide and creates a focused azimuthally or radially polarized beam emanating from the surface of the substrate. It is implemented in silicon-on-insulator waveguides and does not require any external components to focus the beam. The focal spot size can be subwavelength and is potentially useful for lithography, imaging, optical data storage, optical trapping, optical excitation of molecules, or coupling to optical fibers.     

Efficient coupling of a laser to a waveguide using a taper designed by conformal mapping

Maximising the optical power collected in a waveguide from the diffracting field of a semiconductor laser is desirable in optical fibre communication systems. However, the spot size and phase front curvature of the laser field usually makes a poor overlap with the mode of the receiving waveguide. Various proposals have been made to improve this coupling. This paper presents the design of a tapered waveguide section, having the correct geometry and refractive index profile, to efficiently capture and transform the rapidly diffracting light from a semiconductor laser to a planar wavefront in a straight waveguide. Experimentally, such an approach requires the refining of available techniques (UV exposure, ion implantation or diffusion) to obtain the required grading of the refractive index profile within the tapered input section of the receiving waveguide.     

基于平板波导的小型红外光栅光谱仪光学设计

为实现红外光谱仪器的小型化,通过分析现有小型光谱仪,提出了一种基于平板波导的小型红外光栅光谱仪的设计方法。平板波导光谱仪的小型化原理与一般的微小型光谱仪不同。在平板波导光谱仪中,光束被限制在一层薄薄的平板波导介质中传播,看起来像是整个光学系统被压扁了。在垂直于平板波导的方向上光学元件的尺寸可以做到很小,从而显著减小光学系统的尺寸。该系统的设计可分为Czerny-Turner结构设计、波导结构设计。先根据像差理论设计Czerny-Turner结构,目标是保证光谱分辨率及校正像差;然后根据几何光学理论设计波导结构,包括平板波导和两个柱面透镜,目标是压缩光束并校正像散;最后将它们输入Zemax软件中进行综合优化,以获得最优的光学系统。据此方法设计了一个平板波导红外光栅光谱仪,工作波段为8~12 μm,数值孔径为0.22,采用线阵探测器。通过Zemax软件对结果进行分析和评价,表明仪器光学系统的尺寸为130 mm×125 mm×20 mm,工作波段内光谱分辨率达到80 nm,满足设计指标要求。证明了该优化设计方法是可行的,所得系统尺寸小、性能高。     

Near-field radiation from a ridge waveguide transducer in the vicinity of a solid immersion lens

A near-field optical system is investigated to improve the transmission efficiency of near-field transducers. A ridge waveguide is placed adjacent to a solid immersion lens (SIL) but separated by a low-index dielectric layer. The incident electric field near the focus of the SIL is determined by the Richards-Wolf vector field equations. The finite element method is used to solve Maxwell's equations. A spot size of 31 nm is obtained. The maximum value of the absorbed optical power density in the recording medium is 7.51 x 10(-4) mW/nm3 for a 100 mW input power.     

Optical head with metal cladding in asymmetrical butted-grating structure for small thermal spot in laser-assisted magnetic recording

A planar near-field optical head with a high optical efficiency of 12.9% (3.2 times higher than that of our previous design) for laser-assisted magnetic recording is described. In this head, a slab-type waveguide with a narrow core is butt-coupled into a one-sided multilayer thin-film stack. Metal cladding is used in the core because of its high optical efficiency due to surface plasmon excitation. To keep production costs low, we use only two layers for the side part, which act as a two-index-step lens that couples light in the side part into a core of the central part. We optimized the parameters of this optical head and recording medium by means of an optical simulator using the finite-difference time-domain method and a thermal simulator. The calculated full width half maximum (FWHM) optical spot size on the recording medium is 24 × 47 nm² and the thermal spot size is 80 × 88 nm² (FWHM).     

Subwavelength-sized beam spot confinement using an optical thin core dielectric ridge-type waveguide in leaky mode

Optical near-field plasmon-enhancement techniques have made marked contributions to the field of subwavelength optical beam spot generation for photonic devices. However, the metal material used is not sufficiently heat resistant for high-temperature operating requirements, such as laser-assisted magnetic recording storage. Therefore, it is preferable to use a dielectric material as a heat source for this application. To realize a subwavelength optical beam spot size using a dielectric material, we extensively analyze a leaky mode dielectric waveguide with a thin core. Finally, we show a new ridge-type dielectric waveguide using a leaky mode operation for a subwavelength beam spot.     

PIN-photodiode with a large spot size input waveguide

Polarization insensitive optical coupling of a large spot size input waveguide to a small spot size photodiode is achieved by the introduction of a transition waveguide. The coupling efficiency to the photodetector and the related absorption efficiency of the photodiode depend mainly on the refractive indices of the different InGaAsP layers. Waveguide alignments, waveguide widths and the n-contact etch depth do not influence the absorption efficiency relative to a 1-dB tolerance.     

Efficient design of silicon slot waveguide optical modulator

An optimal design of a slot waveguide is presented for realizing an ultrafast optical modulator based on a 220 nm silicon wafer technology. The recipe is to maximize the confinement and interaction between optical power supported by the waveguide and electric field applied through metallic electrodes. As height of waveguide is fixed at 220 nm, the waveguide and slot width are optimized to maximize the confinement factor of optical power. Moreover, metal electrodes tend to make the waveguide lossy, their optimal placement is calculated to reduce the optical loss and enhance the voltage per unit width in the slot. Performance of an optimally designed slot waveguide with metal electrodes as ultrafast modulator is also discussed.     

光波导滤波器的理论与最优化设计

本文提出一种新颖光波导滤波器结构,分析其设计理论,并进行最优化设计.该设计的计算方法简便,且可推广到多种介质波导构成的滤波器.其精确度优于通常的等效介电常数法(EDC法).     

Design and Fabrication of Microlens Array for Near-Field Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser Parallel Optical Head

A GaP microlens for collecting laser light was developed in the tip of a near-field probe. It is important to realize a near-field optical probe head with high throughput and a small spot size. The design and fabrication results of the GaP microlens array are described. The most suitable GaP microlens with a probe was calculated as having a 10 μm radius using the two-dimensional finite difference time domain (2-D FDTD) method. The full width half maximum (FWHM) spot size variation and optical power density tolerance were calculated as 157 nm ± 5 nm and 7%, respectively. A spherical GaP microlens was fabricated with a radius of 10 μm by controlling the Cl₂/Ar gas mixture ratio. The difference between the theoretical spherical shape and the fabricated GaP microlens was evaluated as 40 nm at peak to valley. The FWHM spot size and optical throughput of the fabricated microlens were measured as 520 nm and 63%, respectively. The microlens was the same as a theoretical lens with a 10 μm radius. The micron-lens array fabrication process for a near-field optical head was demonstrated in this experiment.     

Focusing x-ray beams to nanometer dimensions

We address the question: what is the smallest spot size to which an x-ray beam can be focused? We show that confinement of the beam within a narrowly tapered waveguide leads to a theoretical minimum beam size of the order of 10 nm (FWHM), the exact value depending only on the electron density of the confining material. This limit appears to apply to all x-ray focusing devices. Mode mixing and interference can help to achieve this spot size without the need for ultrasmall apertures.     

Analysis of reconfigurable multi-channel wavelength add drop multiplexer for intelligent optical networks

This paper presents design of an electro-optically tunable polymer multi-channel wavelength add drop multiplexer (WADM). The proposed WADM with trapezoidal waveguide geometry and poled electro-optical polymer material in the waveguide cores enables the wavelength tuning speed of WADM as 7.5 ps at the resonance wavelength of 1550 nm and coupling length of 1.5 mm. The device can be electro-optically tuned to add/drop multiple channels. Transmission spectra of the device with varying device parameters are simulated. The proposed WADM with high speed, small size and varying tuning capability makes this device, an important element in faster provisioning and routing of light paths in intelligent optical network.     

Spot-size conversion effect on integrated photonic devices

Using numerically simulated results, we show that an efficient laser-to-optical fibre coupling is possible by incorporating a uniform spot size converter (SSC) based on diluted waveguides with low contrast index waveguide. We propose photonic devices and circuits composed of a laser coupled through a SSC to a one and more microdisks, which are coupled to an optical fibre. Using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, we simulate the propagation characteristics of light in the fundamental elements as the pulse propagates down the whole structure. Also by the use of the FDTD method, we model and predict the geometrical parameters used for the design of the different types of the proposed devices. It is shown that the coupling efficiency is less than 10% without the diluted waveguide, but the SSC couplers have over 73% power transmission. The gap width between the microdisks, coupling between the laser and the sequence of microdisks is investigated. We report the microdisk effect on the coupling efficiency between the laser-SSC structure and the optical fibre.     

Near-Field Analysis of Micro-Aperture Surface Emitting Laser for High Density Optical Data Storage

We present the design of a novel metal micro-aperture surface emitting laser for tera byte optical data storage. The field distribution near micro-aperture is calculated by 2-dimensional finite element method, and it is shown that a spot size as narrow as 100 nm beyond a diffraction limit is obtainable.     

All-optical controllable trapping and transport of subwavelength particles on a tapered photonic crystal waveguide

We propose that a tapered photonic crystal waveguide design can unify optical trapping and transport functionalities to advance the controllability of optical manipulation. Subwavelength particles can be trapped by a resonance-enhanced field and transported to a specified position along the waveguide on demand by varying the input wavelength. A simulated transport ability as high as 148 (transport distance/wavelength variation) is obtained by the waveguide with 0.1° tilted angle. Stable trapping of a 50 nm polystyrene particle can be achieved with input power of 7 mW. We anticipate that this design would be beneficial for future life science research and optomechanical applications.     

聚合物阵列波导光栅的制作技术

研究了聚合物阵列波导光栅AWG制作的几个关键技术.首先,为了克服反应离子刻蚀过程中单独使用光刻胶作掩膜而导致的光波导形状和尺寸偏离设计的缺点,采用了光刻胶与金属掩膜相结合的双掩膜技术进行器件制作.详细介绍了双掩膜技术制备聚合物AWG的过程,并得出铝膜作为掩膜的最佳厚度为100nm左右.测试给出了使用和没有使用双掩膜的对比结果,该结果表明使用双掩膜技术制作的波导质量明显好于单独使用光刻胶作掩膜制作的结果.其次,采用蒸气回溶技术来减小反应离子刻蚀产生的波导表面和侧壁的起伏,从而降低了波导的散射损耗.结果表明,蒸气回溶技术使所制作的波导表面的均方根粗糙度从41.307nm降低到24.564nm.     

EMCCD侦察探测装置光学系统设计

为了满足EMCCD侦察探测装置的实际使用要求,设计了一个三视场光学系统。系统采用EMCCD接收,像元尺寸为16 m16 m 。通过对比4种成像系统结构形式的优缺点,选定三视场光学系统的初始结构形式,运用CODEV软件对其进行优化,实现600 nm～850 nm波段范围内三视场光学系统成像。设计结果表明,三视场光学系统的传递函数MTF在35 lp/mm频率处均大于0.5,点列斑直径均小于像元尺寸,畸变均小于0.2%,成像对比度满足使用要求。     

1.55μmSi_(1-x)Ge_x光波导与Si_(1-x)Ge_x/Si多量子阱探测器集成的优化设计

对１．５５μｍ波长的Ｓｉ１－ｘＧｅｘ光波导和Ｓｉ１－ｘＧｅｘ／Ｓｉ多量子阱（ＭＱＷ）红外探测器的集成器件结构进行了系统的分析和优化设计。优化结果为：１）对Ｓｉ１－ｘＧｅｘ光波导，Ｇｅ含量ｘ＝０．０５，脊宽、高和腐蚀深度分别为８、３和２．６μｍ；２）对Ｓｉ１－ｘＧｅｘ／Ｓｉ多量子阱红外探测器，Ｇｅ含量ｘ＝０．５，探测器由厚度为５５０ｎｍ、２３个周期的６ｎｍＳｉ０．５Ｇｅ０．５＋１７ｎｍＳｉ组成，长度约２ｍｍ。结果表明，这种结构器件的内量子效率可达８８％。