We study propagation and switching of slow-light pulses in nonlinear couplers with phase-shifted Bragg gratings. We demonstrate that power-controlled nonlinear self-action of light can be used to compensate dispersion-induced broadening of pulses through the formation of gap solitons, to control pulse switching in the coupler, and to tune the propagation velocity.
An all optical soliton diode (AOSD) is proposed based on a sandwich nonlinear Bragg-grating structure: a linearly chirped Bragg-grating linked to a uniform Bragg-grating and again to a chirped Bragg-grating. The nonreciprocity is achieved by introducing two spatially asymmetric chirped Bragg-gratings with optical nonlinearity. High transmission ratio up to 150 is obtained when launching a picosecond Gaussian pulse into the setting. We find that such pulses in a form of solitons propagate at a rather small velocity ($<0.03c$) when pulse wavelength is selected in the vicinity of photonic bandgap…
The propagation of solitary waves in a Bragg grating formed by an array of thin nanostructured dielectric films is considered. A system of equations of Maxwell-Duffing type and describing forward- and backward-propagating waves in such a grating, is derived. Exact solitary wave solutions are found, analyzed, and compared with the results of direct numerical simulations.
We demonstrate monolithically defined grating couplers in $Z$-cut lithium niobate on insulator for efficient vertical coupling between an optical fiber and a single mode waveguide. The grating couplers exhibit $\sim 44.6\%$/coupler and $\sim 19.4\%$/coupler coupling efficiency for TE and TM polarized light respectively. Taperless grating couplers are investigated to realize a more compact design.
Strong retardation of ultrashort optical pulses, including their deceleration and stoppage in the form of Bragg solitons in a cascaded Bragg-grating (BG) structure, is proposed. The manipulations of the pulses are carried out, using nonlinear effects, in a chirped BG segment which is linked, via a defect, to a uniform grating. The storage of the ultrashort pulses is shown to be very robust with respect to variations of the input field intensity, suggesting the feasibility of storing ultrafast optical pulses in such a structure. Physical estimates are produced for the BGs written in silicon.
A numerical investigation of a two dimensional integrated fiber grating coupler capable of exciting several LP fiber modes in both TE and TM polarization is presented. Simulation results and an assessment of the numerical complexity of the 3D, fully vectorial finite element model of the device are shown.
Light propagation in a Bragg periodic structure containing thin films with metallic nanoparticles is studied. Plasmonic resonance frequency, Bragg frequency, and light carrier frequency are assumed to be close. Exact solutions describing solitary gap-waves are found, and a light arrest phenomenon due to nonlinearity of plasmonic oscillations is studied.
We present a gradient-based algorithm to design general 1D grating couplers without any human input from start to finish, including a choice of initial condition. We show that we can reliably design efficient couplers to have multiple functionalities in different geometries, including conventional couplers for single-polarization and single-wavelength operation, polarization-insensitive couplers, and wavelength-demultiplexing couplers. In particular, we design a fiber-to-chip blazed grating with under 0.2 dB insertion loss that requires a single etch to fabricate and no back-reflector.
We investigate the spatial and spectral properties of broad-area vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL) with frequency-selective feedback by a volume Bragg grating (VBG). We demonstrate wavelength locking similar to the case of edge-emitters but the spatial mode selection is different from the latter. On-axis spatial solitons obtained at threshold give way to off-axis extended lasing states beyond threshold. The investigations focus on a self-imaging external cavity. It is analyzed how deviations from the self-imaging condition affect the pattern formation and a certain robustness of …
We demonstrate a novel grating coupler design based on double asymmetric and vertically oriented waveguide scatterers to efficiently couple normally incident light to a fundamental mode silicon waveguide laying on a buried oxide layer.
We design a focusing grating coupler by a simultaneous apodization of the filling factor and the period. In addition to in plane focusing to the input waveguide providing a total length of less than 70μm, a further apodization of the curvature allows out of plane focusing into a fiber set 150μm away from the grating surface. The design is proposed for novel semiconductor on insulator waveguides such as GaInP. The coupling efficiency is calculated from two dimensional simulation which is about 45%.
The efficient generation of surface plasmons from free space optical waves is still an open problem in the field. Here we present a methodology and optimized design for a grating coupler. The photo-excitation of surface plasmons at an Ag-SiO2 interface is numerically demonstrated to yield greater than 50% coupling from a Gaussian beam into surface plasmon voltages and currents.
A Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) perfectly vertical fibre-to-chip grating coupler is proposed and designed based on engineered subwavelength structures. The high directionality of the coupler is achieved by implementing step gratings to realize asymmetric diffraction and by applying effective index variation with auxiliary ultra-subwavelength gratings. The proposed structure is numerically analysed by using two-dimensional Finite Difference Time Domain (2D FDTD) method and achieves 76% (-1.19 dB) coupling efficiency and 39 nm 1-dB bandwidth.
To optimize the coupling efficiency of grating couplers, we extend an analytical model for the design of apodized grating couplers, taking into account the constraints on the upper and lower bounds of the scattering strength as determined by fabrication technology. We prove that our model gives the global optimum distribution of the scattering strength with the presence of such constraints. We apply our model to the standard problem of coupling from a silicon chip to a single-mode fiber, as well as more complex problems including the coupling to a vortex beam, and the design of a focusing grat…
A novel approach for a delay line interferometer (DLI) based purely on forward Bragg scattering is proposed. We have numerically and experimentally demonstrated that a Bragg grating can deliver the functionality of a DLI in its transmission mode along a single common interfering optical path, instead of the conventional DLI implementation with two interfering optical paths. As a proof of concept, a fiber Bragg grating has been designed and fabricated, showing the desired functionality in the transmission mode of the Bragg grating. The proposed "Bragg-DLI" approach is applicable to any kind of …
We demonstrate a kind of grating coupler that generates high quality flat-top beam with a small beamwidth from photonic integrated circuits into free-space. The grating coupler is designed on a silicon-on-insulator wafer with a 220 nm-thick silicon layer and consists of a dual-etch grating (DG) and a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR). By adjusting the structural parameters of DG and DBR, a pixel-level (6.6 um) flat-top beam with the vertical radiation of -0.5 dB and the mode match of 97% at 1550 nm is realized. Furthermore, a series of high-efficiency grating couplers are designed to create fl…
We report a comprehensive study on the performance of uniform and non-uniform based subwavelength grating couplers in Silicon-on-Insulator. The two performance metrics, coupling efficiency and bandwidth enhancement and trade-offs is presented. We also present, design parameters to achieve high-efficiency and broadband operation based on the detailed study of various loss mechanisms in the grating. Based on the detailed analysis subwavelength grating coupler designs with efficiency as high as 84 % with a 1 dB bandwidth of 50 nm and 98 % with a 44 nm 1 dB bandwidth is presented.
We have designed a polarization-splitting grating coupler (PSGC) in silicon-oninsulator (SOI) that has 1.2 dB peak loss in numerical simulations, which is the best simulated performance of PSGCs without a bottom reflector to the best of our knowledge. Adjoint method-based shape optimization enables us to explore complex geometries that are intractable with conventional design approaches. Physics-based process-independent knowledge of PSGCs is extracted from the adjoint optimization and can be transferred to other platforms with a minimum of effort.
We derive the rogue wave solution of the classical massive Thirring model, that describes nonlinear optical pulse propagation in Bragg gratings. Combining electromagnetically induced transparency with Bragg scattering four-wave mixing, may lead to extreme waves at extremely low powers.
A means to calculate the multimodal spectral response of Bragg gratings in general non-circular multimode waveguides is proposed. To illustrate the power of the technique, the spectra of two Bragg temperature sensors are numerically calculated in which coupling between 100 modes considered. It is shown how the Bragg wavelength in multimode Bragg grating waveguides is affected by the number of modes and energy distribution among them. Good matching of the simulated spectrum of a multimode Bragg grating on a planar inverted rib waveguide to the measured spectrum is seen.
We numerically propose a scheme for realizing an all-optical femtosecond soliton diode based on a tailored heterojunction Bragg grating, which is designed by two spatially asymmetric chirped cholesteric liquid crystals. Our simulations demonstrate that with the consideration of optical nonlinearity, not only the femtosecond diode effect with nonreciprocal transmission ratio up to 120 can be achieved, but also the optical pulse evolving into soliton which maintains its shape during propagation through the sample is observed. Further, the influence of pulse width and the carrier wavelength to th…
Optical gap solitons, which exist due to a balance of nonlinearity and dispersion due to a Bragg grating, can couple to acoustic waves through electrostriction. This gives rise to a new species of ``gap-acoustic'' solitons (GASs), for which we find exact analytic solutions. The GAS consists of an optical pulse similar to the optical gap soliton, dressed by an accompanying phonon pulse. Close to the speed of sound, the phonon component is large. In subsonic (supersonic) solitons, the phonon pulse is a positive (negative) density variation. Coupling to the acoustic field damps the solitons' osci…
We propose a new method to narrow the linewidth of entangled photons generated from spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC). An internal Bragg grating is incorporated onto a nonlinear optical crystal waveguide. We study theoretically the spectral characteristics of SPDC under two Bragg grating structures. We show that using the Bragg grating with a midway pi-phase shifter, it is a promising way to generate narrow-line entangled photons.
Vertical coupling using a diffraction grating is a convenient way to couple light into an optical waveguide. Several optimization approaches have been suggested in order to design such a coupler; however, most of them are implemented using algorithm based modelling. In this paper, we suggest an intuitive method based on S-matrix formalism for analytically optimize 3-port vertical grating coupler devices. The suggested method is general and can be applied to any 3-port coupler device in order to achieve an optimal design based on user constrains. The simplicity of the model allows reduction of …
We have explored through numerical simulations the amplification of laser pulses in nonlinear fiber Bragg gratings with gain and normal dispersion. The distortion of the temporal intensity profile caused by the higher-order dispersion coefficients is examined. The stabilizing effect of fourth-order dispersion on pulse propagation is demonstrated. For some conditions, the amplified pulse shape evolves towards a Bragg similariton, a quasi-parabolic temporal profile with wave-breaking free temporal characteristics.
We propose the use of interleaved graphene sections on top of a silicon waveguide to implement tunable Bragg gratings. The filter central wavelength and bandwidth can be controlled changing the chemical potential of the graphene sections. Apodization techniques are also presented.
We present direct UV-written waveguides and Bragg gratings operating at 780 nm. By combining two gratings into a Fabry-Perot cavity we have devised and implemented a novel and practical method of measuring the group delay of Bragg gratings.
In this letter we present a new technique for pulse shaping. The desired pulse is shaped by two apodized chirped fiber Bragg gratings which dispersions are adjusted to be cancelled. This technique exploits the well-known property of linearly-chirped gratings, in which the apodization (amplitude) grating profile maps its spectral response. This technique presents inherent advantages of chirped fiber Bragg gratings and direct design in frequency domain.
We report on the fabrication and characterization of photonic-based nanothermometers, a silicon photonic Bragg grating and photonic crystal cavity. When cladded with silicon dioxide layer the sensors have at least eight times better sensitivity compared to the sensitivity of conventional fiber Bragg grating sensors. We demonstrate that these photonic thermometers are a viable temperature sensing solution.
The inscription of Bragg gratings in chalcogenide (As2Se3) wires with sub-wavelength diameter is proposed and demonstrated. A modified transverse holographic method employing He Ne laser light at a wavelength of λw = 633 nm allows the writing of Bragg grating reflectors in the 1550 nm band. The gratings reach an extinction ratio of 40 dB in transmission and a negative photo-induced index change of δn~0.01. The inscription of Bragg gratings in chalcogenide microwires will enable the fabrication of new devices with applications in nonlinear optics, and sensing in the near-to-mid-infrared region …
We report on an optical imaging design based on common-path off-axis digital holography, using a multiplexed volume Bragg grating. In the reported method, a reference optical wave is made by deflection and spatial filtering through a volume Bragg grating. This design has several advantages including simplicity, stability and robustness against misalignment.
We report fabrication of THz fiber Bragg gratings (TFBG) using CO2 laser inscription on subwavelength step-index polymer fibers. A fiber Bragg grating with 48 periods features a ~4 GHz-wide stop band and ~15 dB transmission loss in the middle of a stop band. The potential of such gratings in design of resonant sensor for monitoring of paper quality is demonstrated. Experimental spectral sensitivity of the TFBG-based paper thickness sensor was found to be ~ -0.67 GHz / 10 um. A 3D electromagnetic model of a Bragg grating was used to explain experimental findings.
We provide an optimal control framework for efficiently coupling light in a bare fiber into Bragg gratings with a cubic nonlinearity. The light-grating interaction excites gap solitons, a type of localized nonlinear coherent state which propagates with a central frequency in the forbidden band gap, resulting in a dramatically slower group velocity. Due to the nature of the band gap, a substantial amount of light is back-reflected by the grating's strong reflective properties. We optimize, via a projected gradient descent method, the transmission efficiency of previously designed nonuniform gra…
We present a one-port sensor based on a single diffraction grating delineated over a planar optical waveguide. Distinctly to previously reported devices, the grating here is used not only as I/O coupler, but also provides a built-in reference beam which is basically unaffected by the sensing process as manifested in changes of the effective refractive index of the waveguide. The sensing process causes two effects simultaneously: a change in the angle of the out-coupled beam and a change in the phase accumulated by that beam. Both changes can be determined by their conjunction with the referenc…
We report the first experimental observation of photosensitivity in As2Se3 glass at a wavelength of 1550 nm. We utilize this photosensitivity to induce the first Bragg gratings using a laser source at a wavelength of 1550 nm. We quantify the photosensitivity thresholds related to exposition intensity and exposition time. Finally, we demonstrate that As2Se3 Bragg gratings are widely tunable in wavelength as the microwire can withstand an applied longitudinal strain of 4 \times 104 με.
We investigate the performance of waveguide Bragg gratings as a function of imperfections introduced in the fabrication process. Effects of stitching errors introduced in the electron-beam and UV-lithography are discussed in details.
We address nonlinear signal switching between two low-index defect channels induced in periodic optical lattices. In contrast to conventional directional couplers, where the guiding mechanism is total internal reflection or refraction, in such Bragg-type coupler, the guidance is of a photonic-bandgap origin. The coupling length in the low-index coupler is controlled by the lattice parameters and by the channel spacing. In the nonlinear regime the Bragg-type coupler behaves as an all-optical switch, exhibiting a remarkable difference of switching power for focusing versus defocusing nonlinearit…
The central theme of this article is the analysis of the usefulness of introducing four-wave mixing or modulation of Kerr nonlinearity in a nonuniform grating structure with gain and loss. To do so, we propose an inhomogeneous system in which the nonlinearity of the $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric grating is modulated. It is proven that the proposed scheme can be fruitful only if the nonlinearity and its associated modulation terms are assumed to be self-defocusing ones. In order to cut down the intensity required for the steering, the sign of chirping is taken to be negative and the wavelength of op…
While grating couplers have become the de-facto standard for optical access to integrated silicon photonics platforms, their performance at visible wavelengths, in moderate index contrast platforms like silicon nitride, leaves significant room for improvement. In particular, the index contrast governs the diffraction efficiency per grating tooth and the resulting overall coupler length. In this work, we develop two approaches to address this problem: a dielectric grating that sums multiple optical modes to increase the overall output intensity, and an embedded metal grating that enhances the a…
We study nanofibers with Bragg gratings from equidistant holes. We calculate analytically and numerically the reflection and transmission coefficients for a single grating and also for a cavity formed by two gratings. We show that the reflection and transmission coefficients of the gratings substantially depend on the number of holes, the hole length, the hole depth, the grating period, and the light wavelength. We find that the reflection and transmission coefficients of the gratings depend on the orientation of the polarization vector of light with respect to the holes. Such a dependence is …
Efficient coupling between integrated optical waveguides and optical fibers is essential to the success of integrated photonics. While many solutions exist, perfectly vertical grating couplers which scatter light out of a waveguide in the direction normal to the waveguide's top surface are an ideal candidate due to their potential to reduce packaging complexity. Designing such couplers with high efficiency, however, has proven difficult. In this paper, we use electromagnetic inverse design techniques to optimize a high efficiency two-layer perfectly vertical silicon grating coupler. Our base d…
University of California, Berkeley(加利福尼亚大学伯克利分校);Hewlett Packard Labs(惠普实验室);Hewlett Packard Enterprise(慧与科技);HPE Belgium(HPE比利时分部)
We present a proof-of-concept technique for the inverse design of electromagnetic devices motivated by the policy gradient method in reinforcement learning, named PHORCED (PHotonic Optimization using REINFORCE Criteria for Enhanced Design). This technique uses a probabilistic generative neural network interfaced with an electromagnetic solver to assist in the design of photonic devices, such as grating couplers. We show that PHORCED obtains better performing grating coupler designs than local gradient-based inverse design via the adjoint method, while potentially providing faster convergence o…
Reflection gratings enable light coupling to optical cavities without transmission through substrates. Gratings that have three ports and are mounted in second-order Littrow configuration even allow the coupling to high-finesse cavities using low diffraction efficiencies. In contrast to conventional transmissive cavity couplers, however, the phase of the diffracted light depends on the lateral position of the grating, which introduces an additional noise coupling. Here we experimentally demonstrate that this kind of noise cancels out once both diffracted output ports of the grating are combine…
We demonstrate apodized fiber Bragg gratings inscribed with a point-by-point technique. We tailor the grating phase and coupling amplitude through precise control over the longitudinal and transverse position of each laser-inscribed modification. This method of apodization is facilitated by the highly-localized, high-contrast modifications generated by focussed IR femtosecond laser inscription. Our technique provides a simple method for the design and implementation of point-by-point fiber Bragg gratings with complex apodization profiles.
We examine collisions of moving solitons in a fiber Bragg grating with a triplet composed of two closely set repulsive defects of the grating and an attractive one inserted between them. A doublet (dipole), consisting of attractive and repulsive defects with a small distance between them,is considered too. Systematic simulations demonstrate that the triplet provides for superior results, as concerns the capture of a free pulse and creation of a standing optical soliton, in comparison with recently studied traps formed by single and paired defects, as well as the doublet: 2/3 of the energy of t…
We present here the inscription of single-mode waveguides with Bragg gratings in sapphire. The waveguide Bragg gratings have a novel multi-layer depressed cladding design in the 1550 nm telecommunications waveband. The Bragg gratings have a narrow bandwidth (<0.5 nm) and have survived annealing at 1000°C. The structures are inscribed with femtosecond laser direct writing, using adaptive beam shaping with a non-immersion objective. A single-mode sapphire fiber Bragg grating is created by writing a waveguide with a Bragg grating within a 425 μm diameter sapphire optical fiber, providing signific…
The ring interferometer with zero optical path difference known as Sagnac one is offered with a diffraction splitting of the entering light beam. As the beamsplitter, a transmission holographic Bragg grating is used. Conditions of normal operation of this interferometer achieve under the equal intensity of beam copies and the adjustable phase shift between them in its two interferometer shoulders. These conditions are met with the holographic grating, which provides the phase shift 180^0 on the central Bragg wavelength. Experimental approbation of the modified interferometer validates the expe…
Measurement and analysis of diffraction parameters of thick transmission holographic phase gratings recorded on PHC-488 photopolymer are presented. Precision determination of the spatial grating period is executed by Bragg angle measurement for two precisely known wavelengths in the first diffraction order and also by Bragg angle measurement on one wavelength in the first and second diffraction orders. Determination of actual grating thickness and depths of spatial modulation of a holographic recording, which are responsible for their main optical characteristics, is carried out with the appli…
We explore the consequences of incorporating parity and time reversal ($\mathcal{PT}$) symmetries on the dynamics of nonreciprocal light propagation exhibited by a class of nonuniform periodic structures known as chirped $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs). The interplay among various grating parameters such as chirping, detuning, nonlinearities, and gain/loss gives rise to unique bi- and multi-stable states in the unbroken as well as broken $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric regimes. The role of chirping on the steering dynamics of the hysteresis curve is influenced by the type of nonl…
Based on the space-time duality of light, we numerically demonstrate that temporal dispersion grating couplers can generate from a single pulse an array of replicas of equal amplitude. The phase-only profile of the temporal grating is optimized by a genetic algorithm that takes into account the optoelectronic bandwidth limitations of the setup.