Irrelevance of bending angle in simple Y-branch power splitter design

Ronald Millett; Henry P. Schriemer; Xia Zhang; Michael Cada

doi:10.1117/12.567364

20 December 2004 Irrelevance of bending angle in simple Y-branch power splitter design

Ronald Millett, Henry P. Schriemer, Xia Zhang, Michael Cada

Proceedings Volume 5577, Photonics North 2004: Optical Components and Devices; (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.567364
Event: Photonics North, 2004, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Abstract

Early development work in the design of optical power splitters, likely influenced by similar construction in the microwave regime, placed heavy emphasis on Y-branch designs with the output waveguides immediately branching from the input waveguide at non-zero angle. This design approach, which is still prevalent, is fundamentally flawed from the perspective of both optical power flow and fabrication, as it leads to significant excess loss and/or a large statistical variance. If inherent broadband response is not a critical requirement, directional-coupler or multimode-interference splitters are usually chosen instead. We demonstrate, choosing a minimal function perspective where the optical design is sensitive to the smallest possible set of critical fabrication parameters, that robust and low-loss Y-branch designs are indeed possible. The minimum gap width between waveguides being the critical parameter, we reveal the dependence of the irreducibly simplest design on all elements of the parameter space, as they relate to the critical one. In so doing, we show that the concept of bending angle is irrelevant.

Citation Download Citation

Ronald Millett, Henry P. Schriemer, Xia Zhang, and Michael Cada "Irrelevance of bending angle in simple Y-branch power splitter design", Proc. SPIE 5577, Photonics North 2004: Optical Components and Devices, (20 December 2004); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.567364

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