Alejandro Sánchez-Postigo

Broadband fiber-chip zero-order surface grating coupler with 0.4 dB efficiency

Surface grating couplers enable efficient coupling of light between optical fibers and nanophotonic waveguides. However, in conventional grating couplers, the radiation angle is intrinsically wavelength dependent, thereby limiting their operation bandwidth. In this Letter, we present a zero-order surface grating coupler in silicon-on-insulator which overcomes this limitation by operating in the subwavelength regime. By engineering the effective refractive index of the grating region, both high coupling efficiency and broadband operation bandwidth are achieved. The grating is assisted by a silicon prism on top of the waveguide, which favors upward radiation and minimizes power losses to substrate. Using a linear apodization, our design achieves a coupling efficiency of 91% (-0.41  dB) and a 1-dB bandwidth of 126 nm.

Subwavelength metamaterial engineering for silicon photonics

Waveguides structured at the subwavelength scale frustrate diffraction and behave as optical metamaterials with controllable refractive index. These structures have found widespread applications in silicon photonics, ranging from sub-decibel efficiency fibre-chip couplers to spectrometers and polarization rotators. Here, we briey describe the design foundations for sub-wavelength waveguide devices, both in terms of analytic effective medium approximations, as well as through rigorous Floch-Bloquet mode simulation. We then focus on two novel structures that exemplify the use of subwavelength waveguides: mid-infrared waveguides and ultra-broadband beamsplitters.

Design of optical metamaterial waveguide structures (Conference Presentation)

Subwavelength gratings (SWGs) are periodic structures with a pitch (Λ) smaller than the wavelength of the propagating wave (λ), so that diffraction effects are suppressed. These structures thus behave as artificial metamaterials where the refractive index and the dispersion profile can be controlled with a proper design of the geometry of the structure. SWG waveguides have found extensive applications in the field of integrated optics, such as efficient fiber-chip couplers, broadband multimode interference (MMI) couplers, polarization beam splitters or evanescent field sensors, among others. From the point of view of nano-fabrication, the subwavelength condition (Λ << λ) is much easier to meet for long, mid-infrared wavelengths than for the comparatively short near-infrared wavelengths. Since most of the integrated devices based on SWGs have been proposed for the near-infrared, the true potential of subwavelength structures has not yet been completely exploited. In this talk we summarize some valuable guidelines for the design of high performance SWG integrated devices. We will start describing some practical aspects of the design, such as the range of application of semi-analytical methods, the rigorous electromagnetic simulation of Floquet modes, the relevance of substrate leakage losses and the effects of the random jitter, inherent to any fabrication process, on the performance of SWG structures. Finally, we will show the possibilities of the design of SWG structures with two different state-of-the-art applications: i) ultra-broadband MMI beam splitters with an operation bandwidth greater than 300nm for telecom wavelengths and ii) a set of suspended waveguides with SWG lateral cladding for mid-infrared applications, including low loss waveguides, MMI couplers and Mach-Zehnder interferometers.

Broadband high-efficiency zero-order surface grating coupler for the near- and mid-infrared wavelength ranges

Efficient coupling of light from a chip into an optical fiber is a major issue in silicon photonics, as the dimensions of high-index-contrast photonic integrated waveguides are much smaller than conventional fiber diameters. Surface grating couplers address the coupling problem by radiating the optical power from a waveguide through the surface of the chip to the optical fiber, or vice versa. However, since the grating radiation angle substantially varies with the wavelength, conventional surface grating couplers cannot offer high coupling efficiency and broad bandwidth simultaneously. To overcome this limitation, for the near-infrared band we have recently proposed SOI-based zero-order grating couplers, which, making use of a subwavelength-engineered waveguide and a high-index prism, suppress the explicit dependence between the radiation angle and the wavelength, achieving a 1-dB bandwidth of 126 nm at λ = 1.55 μm. However, in the near-infrared, the bandwidth enhancement of zero-order grating couplers is limited by the effective index wavelength dispersion of the grating. In the mid-infrared spectral region, the waveguide dispersion is lower, alleviating the bandwidth limitation. Here we demonstrate numerically our zero-order grating coupler concept in the mid-infrared at λ = 3.8 μm. Several couplers for the silicon-on-insulator and the germanium-on-silicon nitride platforms are designed and compared, with subdecibel coupling efficiencies and 1-dB bandwidths up to ~680 nm.

Data for Suspended silicon waveguides for long-wave infrared wavelengths

This is the dataset used to create figures 2 and 4 on the paper: Soler Penades, J. et al (2017). Suspended silicon waveguides for long-wave infrared wavelengths. Optics Letters.

A subwavelength structured multimode interference coupler for the 3-4 micrometers mid-infrared band

The mid-infrared is attracting increasing attention since many molecules, including potentially hazardous gases such as methane and carbon dioxide, exhibit very specific absorption spectra in this wavelength region. Integrated silicon photonics circuits are envisioned to enable compact and low-cost measurement solutions for these molecules. Multimode interference couplers (MMIs) are basic building blocks for photonic circuits and a broad operational bandwidth is key if flexible operation is to be achieved, e.g. to detect different gases. Here we overcome the bandwidth limitations found in classical MMIs by segmenting the multimode region at a sub-wavelength pitch to engineer its refractive index and dispersion. We achieve less than 0:5 dB imbalance and excess loss in the complete 3 ̶ 4 µm wavelength range. The sub-wavelength MMI not only exhibits nearly threefold improvement in bandwidth, but is also about three times shorter than the conventional device.