The persistent drive for increased bandwidth while simultaneously reducing cost in short range optical communications systems is placing substantial pressure on component manufacturers to increase the level of integration and adopt lower cost assembly processes. Moving to well established processes used widely in the electronics industry such as wafer scale test and assembly, and high speed vision-based alignment is a key step to satisfying this demand.
Ultrafast lasers offer a unique tool for the integration of photonic components. This paper show how they can be used for manufacturing glass-based interconnect components, which are applied to both fiber-fiber and fiber-transceiver applications. This paper shows how these components can be used as optical interfaces or further combined with conventional lithographic processes to help solve challenges in the packaging of photonic components. In addition to this, the paper will also show how these components can be used as a n integration platform for optical sub-assemblies and photonic-electronic interposers.
A numerical study on the design of a novel dual polarization, low loss, and low fabrication complexity, angled 3D Glassto- SiPh coupling interface is presented. The interface is composed of a 2° angled 3D glass waveguide attached to a thin-SOI platform. The coupler design and the optimization methodology relies on the optimum Constant Loss Taper (CLT) silicon taper calculation. The achieved coupling efficiency is 83.50% and 81.22% for TE and TM polarization state, respectively, at 1.55 μm. The results are obtained using an EigenMode Expansion (EME) propagation solver and are verified through the 3D FDTD simulation method.
The traffic carried by core optical networks grows at a steady but remarkable pace of 30-40% year-over-year. Optical transmissions and networking advancements continue to satisfy the traffic requirements by delivering the content over the network infrastructure in a cost and energy efficient manner. Such core optical networks serve the information traffic demands in a dynamic way, in response to requirements for shifting of traffics demands, both temporally (day/night) and spatially (business district/residential). However as we are approaching fundamental spectral efficiency limits of singlemode fibers, the scientific community is pursuing recently the development of an innovative, all-optical network architecture introducing the spatial degree of freedom when designing/operating future transport networks. Spacedivision- multiplexing through the use of bundled single mode fibers, and/or multi-core fibers and/or few-mode fibers can offer up to 100-fold capacity increase in future optical networks. The EU INSPACE project is working on the development of a complete spatial-spectral flexible optical networking solution, offering the network ultra-high capacity, flexibility and energy efficiency required to meet the challenges of delivering exponentially growing traffic demands in the internet over the next twenty years. In this paper we will present the motivation and main research activities of the INSPACE consortium towards the realization of the overall project solution.
Recent results from our work using ultrafast laser writing to fabricate waveguides and on-chip devices inside sulphide chalcogenide glasses are presented in this paper. Low loss single-mode (SM) and multi-mode (MM) waveguide arrays were successfully laser fabricated, for the first time to our knowledge, for operation in the whole near-IR (NIR) to mid- IR (MIR) range (1 to 11 μm wavelengths). These waveguides are demonstrated to have numerical apertures (NA) which can exceed NA=0.2, therefore also allowing for low bend losses as well as direct coupling to QC lasers. We also demonstrate the control over the waveguide mode field diameters (MFDs) (at 1/e2) by changing the waveguide core sizes and index contrasts, achieving typical values of 44 μm at 10.6 μm, down to 6 μm for telecom 1.55 μm light. The optical nonlinear properties of these waveguides have also been preliminarily investigated. Using a femtosecond (fs) optical parametric amplifier system, the optical nonlinearity of bulk gallium lanthanum sulphide (GLS) glass was first measured at 2.5 μm. The upper limits for the nonlinear properties of the laser modified material could be estimated based upon the nonlinear spectral broadening of a 2.5 μm fs pulse train coupled into SM waveguides. Further work includes the demonstration of on-chip three dimensional (3D) beam combiners for the MIR range (10.6 μm in this work), for near future implementation in astronomical observatories for stellar interferometry.
A continuous flow microfluidic cell separation platform has been designed and fabricated using femtosecond laser
inscription. The device is a scalable and non-invasive cell separation mechanism aimed at separating human embryonic
stem cells from differentiated cells based on the dissimilarities in their cytoskeletal elasticity. Successful demonstration
of the device has been achieved using human leukemia cells the elasticity of which is similar to that of human embryonic
stem cells.
The authors report on the fabrication of buried waveguides in both lithium niobate and periodically poled lithium
niobate. First a low insertion loss waveguide is fabricated in z-cut lithium niobate using femtosecond laser
waveguide inscription. To fabricate a waveguide exhibiting both low propagation and coupling losses, we used the
multiscan fabrication technique to control the size of the waveguide cross section. We measured coupling losses of
1.1 dB/facet and propagation losses as low as 0.6 dBcm-1. Optical waveguides have been also inscribed in
periodically poled lithium niobate by femtosecond laser pulses with the same multiscan technique. Second harmonic
generation experiments from a fundamental wavelength of 1567 nm demonstrate that the nonlinear optical
coefficient in the waveguides is preserved, yielding a conversion efficiency of 18% W-1.
This paper reports the development of novel retroreflectors for use in free-space optical communication systems. It will be important for the retroreflectors to have a very wide field of view to make such systems practicable and affordable. Corner cube retroreflectors present a practical means of meeting the requirement for a wide field of view, but require use of materials with very high refractive index. Practical measurements on initial samples of high index corner cubes have shown encouraging optical performance. The measured results approximately confirm predictions of the variation of reflection efficiency with the angle of incidence. Retroreflectors based on graded-index, spherical (GRIN-sphere) lenses potentially offer an alternative with valuable technical advantages over the use of high-index corner cubes, if such lenses can be fabricated with a suitable combination of optical quality, size and relative aperture. The key property of GRIN-sphere lenses is that they can in principle suppress the most problematic feature of sphere lenses, that is, their strong spherical aberration. Predictions for practical graded-index sphere lens structures show valuable potential for improvement compared to uniform sphere lenses, including diffraction limited optical performance over significant fractions of the lens aperture.
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