Experimental evidence of modal properties using directional couplers in silicon-on-insulator

The single-mode optical rib waveguide is a fundamental building block for many, more complex optical circuits. Recent modelling has been provided in the literature that has investigated polarisation and modal properties of small, deeply-etched rib waveguides in SOL In this paper we present work that has utilised a total of 160 directional couplers fabricated from rib waveguides of various waveguides dimensions, to investigate the validity of the published modelling. In particular 5 waveguide designs have been used to fabricate directional couplers of differing lengths, to map out the variation in coupling of power within the directional couplers. For a singlemode device, a characteristic sinusoidal variation is expected, but the sinusoid will be corrupted in the presence of higher order modes, each of which will have a different coupling length as compared to the fundamental mode. We have observed experimental results that are consistent with the modelling for each of the 5 waveguide designs, and hence we present experimental evidence of higher-order mode behaviour that is consistent with modelling.