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Broadband, low-loss, and fabrication-tolerant photonic passives are of paramount importance in any photonic integrated circuit (PIC). Among others, the adiabatic couplers can have those merits premised on their one-to-one mode transformation characteristics. These devices are usually designed comprising linear waveguide tapers and have typical lengths of 1 mm, in order to minimize inter-modal coupling along the device. The large footprints and, therefore, the fabrication sensitivity can eventually become a barrier toward their widespread applications. Here, we discuss an intuitive generic method for designing compact broadband adiabatic mode converters. The method can be used to design broad types of adiabatic devices for power and polarization manipulations on silicon PICs. Exemplary devices such as polarization beam splitters and polarization rotator splitters, 3 dB power splitters/combiners for quasi-TE and for quasi-TM polarizations, and power tapper for quasi-TE polarization are discussed. The devices provide insertion losses of <1 dB and extinction ratios in the range of 10–20 dB across the 85 nm measurement window. As an important application of the adiabatic devices, we also report on a broadband optical 90° hybrid with an operating bandwidth of 85 nm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An ultracompact and broadband polarization beam splitter (PBS) is proposed by using an asymmetrical directional coupler composed of a hybrid plasmonic waveguide (HPW) and a regular silicon wire (RSW). By properly choosing the structural parameters, transverse-magnetic (TM) mode is cutoff for the RSW and phase-matching condition is only satisfied for transverse-electric (TE) mode. As a result, the input TM-mode in HPW directly passes through, while the input TE-mode in the same HPW is coupled into the RSW. Consequently, the two polarized modes can be effectively separated. Moreover, the present PBS shows fabrication-friendly design and its length can be significantly reduced, since the gap between the HPW and RSW can be shortened to zero. From the results, a ~2.6- \mu \textm -long PBS with a coupling length of 0.1~\mu \textm is achieved and its bandwidth is ~120 nm with a polarization extinction ratio over 14 dB, and an insertion loss below 1 dB for both polarizations. In addition, fabrication tolerances to the key structural parameters are analyzed in detail and field evolution through the designed PBS is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 4 × 25 Gb/s ultrawide misalignment tolerance wavelength-division-multiplex (WDM) transmitter based on novel bidirectional vertical grating coupler has been demonstrated on complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. Simulations indicate the bidirectional grating coupler (BGC) is widely misalignment tolerant, with an excess coupling loss of only 0.55 dB within ±3 μm fiber misalignment range. Measurement shows the excess coupling loss of the BGC is only 0.7 dB within a ±2 μm fiber misalignment range. The bidirectional grating structure not only functions as an optical coupler, but also acts as a beam splitter. By using the bidirectional grating coupler, the silicon optical modulator shows low insertion loss and large misalignment tolerance. The eye diagrams of the modulator at 25 Gb/s don't show any obvious deterioration within the waveguide-direction fiber misalignment ranger of ±2 μm, and still open clearly when the misalignment offset is as large as ±4 μm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel polarisation beam splitter (PBS) with a high extinction ratio in a broad band has been proposed and realised by cascading a bent directional coupler and a low-loss transverse-magnetic (TM)-pass polariser based on a subwavelength grating. The realised PBS has a footprint as small as 3 × 22.5 μm, a high extinction ratio (>20 dB) and a low excess loss (∼1 dB) are obtained over a broad band of ∼60 nm for both transverse-electric and TM polarisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]