Temperature insensitive and ultra wideband silica-based dual polarization optical hybrid for coherent receiver with highly symmetrical interferometer design

To extend the operation wavelength range of dual-polarization optical hybrids (DPOH), we propose a highly symmetrical interferometer design for a polarization beam splitter and an optical hybrid to reduce temperature and wavelength dependence. The design successfully decreases this dependence, and a fabricated DPOH with silica-based planar lightwave circuits provides temperature-insensitive performance with a polarization extinction ratio of over 25 dB and phase errors of less than 3 degrees over the entire C-and L-bands. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America