Promising configurations for grating-waveguide structures are presented. In these structures, the grating layer, which is normally adjacent to the waveguide layer, is displaced by means of an intermediate layer, resulting in significant reduction of losses and weaker coupling. This leads to very narrow spectral bandwidths and high contrast ratios. Experimental results reveal that the spectral bandwidths can be as low as 0.1 nm with contrast ratios greater than 1000, suggesting that these grating-waveguide structures could be useful for optical communication networks.
A novel modulator design incorporating an E-O polymer into a resonant grating waveguide structure is presented. Using purely polymeric material we developed a resonant grating waveguide structure having low loss and high finesse, with approximately 2nm spectral line width at 1.55 mum. An externally applied voltage modulates the refractive index of the E-O waveguide, thereby shifting the resonance wavelength and modulating the incident light at MHz rates. Such modulator operates in free space and does not involve waveguide patterning nor the need for facet conditioning and coupling common to operation in the Mach-Zehnder type configuration.
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