Silica glass bend waveguide assisted by two-dimensional photonic crystals

In this paper we report on the modeling of low index contrast silica glass 90 degrees bend ridge waveguides assisted by a two-dimensional photonic crystal. A three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain (3D-FDTD) based computer code has been used in order to evaluate the transmission characteristics and the in-plane losses of the investigated waveguides having different values of the bend radius. The performance of the bend structure surrounded by two-dimensional photonic crystals is compared to that of a classical bend ridge waveguide and the phenomenon of light confinement is critically analyzed. The device design is optimized for quasi-TM polarization at the wavelength of 1.3 mu m.