Photon-X (United States)

Single-mode perfluoropolymer waveguide structures exhibiting a polarization-independent ultra low loss of <0.05 dB/cm at 1310 nm and <0.07 dB/cm at 1550 nm with a /spl Delta/n of 1.6% have been fabricated for the first time. These new low-loss structures indicate relatively high-power-handling reliability at 1310 and 1550 nm. Based on this, a highly efficient arrayed-waveguide grating multi-demultiplexer with a crosstalk of 30/spl plusmn/2 dB and an insertion loss of 2.8/spl plusmn/0.3 dB is realized.

Perfluoropolymer waveguide structures exhibiting polarization independent ultra low loss of <0.05 dB/cm at 1310 nm and <0.07 dB/cm at 1550 nm have been fabricated for the first time. These new low loss structures indicate relatively high power handling reliability.

The optical properties and characteristics of rare earth- doped polymers have been studied to evaluate their viability for use in optical amplifiers. Rare earth ions are encapsulated in organic, covalently bonded chromophores. The optical properties of various rare earth chromophores doped into polymers are measured and calculated and are then used in numerical simulations of amplifiers and lasers. The result provide an estimate of their potential device performance and establish the fundamental bases for applications in photonics. Owing to their distinct advantages, such as chromophore energy transfer effects, high rare earth ion concentrations, shielding of the ion form high energy vibrations of the host, enhanced optical transition moments and controllable decay rates and branching ratios, rare earth-doped polymers are found to be promising candidates for various device applications. Numerical simulations for samarium and europium doped polymers indicate that gains about 10 dB and greater are achievable in relatively short polymer optical fiber and waveguide amplifiers. Studies of the dependence of metastable state lifetime of rare earth doped polymer systems on doping concentrations reveal that rare earth chromophores dissociation occurs at low concentrations. These results are used to optimize the parameters of our rare earth doped polymer optical waveguide amplifiers.