Title | Asymmetrically Strained Ridge Waveguide for Passive Polarization Conversion |
Publication Type | Journal Article |
Year of Publication | 2008 |
Authors | Bull, J. D., H. Kato, and N. A. F. Jaeger |
Journal | IEEE Photonics Technology Letters |
Volume | 20 |
Pagination | 2186-2188 |
Date Published | NOV-DEC |
Type of Article | Article |
ISSN | 1041-1135 |
Keywords | Birefringence, elasto-optic effect, GaAs, mode conversion, passive polarization converter (PPC), ridge waveguide, strain, Stress |
Abstract | A novel passive polarization converter is presented using the elasto-optic effect in a ridge waveguide. A compressively stressed Si3N4 layer is deposited onto one side of the waveguide while a tensile layer is deposited on the opposing side. The average stress of the tensile and compressive layers is used to cancel the modal transverse-electric-transverse-magnetic (TE-TM) birefringence of the ridge waveguide. The difference in the tensile and compressive stresses induces birefringence with principal axes rotated 45 degrees from the TE-TM orientations. The method is demonstrated on an AlGaAs-GaAs waveguide at 1550 run. We measure the orientation of the axes to be 46 degrees +/- 1 degrees, demonstrating that complete mode conversion can be obtained without using periodic phase matching. Complete conversion is obtained in 1.16 mm with a waveguide loss of 0.1 dB/cm. Stability over temperature is also demonstrated. |
URL | http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/LPT.2008.2007221%7D |
DOI | 10.1109/LPT.2008.2007221 |