HW#2

Silicon Photonics 110A

(Total 10 points)

Assigned on October 13
Due on October 27 (online)

* Please turn in on time. Late homework will have 50% point off.

Problem 1. Propagation loss and bending loss (1 points) Assume you design a
waveguide that is 3 mm long and experiences 5 bends. If the propagation loss is 3
dB/cm and the bending loss is 0.07 dB per bend. How much insertion loss do you
expect?

Problem 2. Design of a directional coupler. Use WGMODES to simulate the

eigenmode of two coupled identical strip waveguides.

Use Couple_mode.m and put imagemode3.m into modesolver\tools. The width of

each waveguide is 500nm. The height is 220nm. The gap between waveguides is
200nm. The wavelength is 1550nm. The cladding is SiO2.

(a) (2 point) Calculate the effective refractive indices of the two supermodes and
plot the symmetric and anti-symmetric results.

(b) (1 point) What is the coupling coefficient κ and the coupling length Lc ?

(c) (1 point) If you want to design a 3-dB directional coupler (i.e., a direction
coupler with 50/50 split ratio), what length should you use? For simplicity, just
consider a straight section without any bending.

Problem 3. Technique to avoid coupling. Assume you simulate two identical

waveguides that are close to each other and found that the coupling length Lc is 200
μm. You want to avoid coupling – you want to make the power transfer to the other
waveguide less than 3 % for any length. One solution is to make the phase
mismatched by changing the waveguide width of one of the waveguides. (a) (1
points) How much Δ β do you need? (b) (1 points) Fig. 2 shows the sensitivity of
n eff with respect to the width for a strip (wire) waveguide. Assume you use 450 nm-
wide waveguides. d neff /dW in this case is 0.0022. How much change in width can
give you the required Δ β? Assume the change in width does not change the
coupling coefficient κ.

Fig. 2 The effective refractive index (green) and the sensitivity of the effective
refractive index with respect to the width (pink) for a TE 0 wire waveguide at the
wavelength of 1550 nm. The waveguide height is 220 nm. The waveguide is cladded
with SiO2

Problem 4. Eigenmode expansion. Assume you have two identical coupled waveguides.
The wavelength is 1550 nm. You know the two supermodes and the corresponding effective
indices are given by
⃗ 1 1 +¿=2.1 ¿
a+ ¿= ,n
√2 1 s() ¿ (symmetric mode)

⃗ 1 1
a−¿=
√ 2 −1 ( )
, n−¿=2
s
¿
¿ (antisymmetric mode)

(a) (1 points) How long is the coupling length Lc ?

(b) (2 points) Assume that at z=0, the field amplitude in the two waveguides is given by

a1 (z=0) 1 3
( ) =
a2 (z=0) √10 1
.()
Please calculate the field amplitude at z = 10 µm, i.e.,

a1 (z=10)
( a2 (z=10) )
=? Please represent your answer in the form of ( ¿¿ c+ di¿ ), where a, b, c, d are

real numbers.
Hint: Expand the input field with the two supermodes.