Femtosecond writing of depressed cladding waveguides in strongly cumulative regime

Abstract

We proposed a novel approach for direct femtosecond inscription of waveguides. It consisted in formation of cladding with reduced refractive index in fused silica. Depressed cladding was based on peripheral regions of individually written neighbored tracks, which should be inscribed in strongly cumulative regime. It was shown, that due to shot time interval between femtosecond laser pulses and relatively slow thermal diffusion, the exposed focal region surrounds by significantly wide cladding with reduced refracted index. Based on proposed approach we demonstrated depressed cladding waveguide inscription in fused silica using emission directly from commercially available femtosecond oscillator without correcting optical systems and second harmonic generation. It was shown, that the new approach provides formation of easily adjustable single mode waveguides with desired mode field diameter. Such depressed cladding waveguides exploit both advantages of fused silica material and depressed cladding geometry. We also verified our suggestion by experiment and inscribed depressed cladding waveguides with two different mode field diameters at similar femtosecond pulse characteristics. The obtained structures provided low propagation losses and good coupling with Gaussian mode. The waveguides supported propagation of both polarizations with nearly identical characteristics. Obtained experimental results were in good agreement with numerical simulation.