Optical properties of epitaxial CaxBa1-xNb2O6 thin film based rib-waveguide structure on (001) MgO for electro-optic applications.

In this work, optical properties of epitaxial CaxBa1-xNb2O6, CBN (x = 0.28) thin film based waveguides are studied at 1550 nm optical communications wavelength. CBN thin films are deposited epitaxially on MgO substrates using Pulsed Laser Deposition and characterized by prism coupling to extract the refractive index and propagation loss. It is shown that the 2 µm-thick epitaxial CBN thin films have a refractive index close to the bulk form and the CBN planar waveguides have a propagation loss of 4.3 ± 0.5 dB/cm. 1 cm-long rib waveguide structures were fabricated using a high density plasma etching. Their propagation losses were measured by the cutback method at 8.4 ± 0.6 dB/cm.

Accurate theoretical and experimental characterization of optical grating coupler.

Periodic structures, acting as reflectors, filters, and couplers, are a fundamental building block section in many optical devices. In this paper, a three-dimensional simulation of a grating coupler, a well-known periodic structure, is conducted. Guided waves and leakage characteristics of an out-of-plane grating coupler are studied in detail, and its coupling efficiency is examined. Furthermore, a numerical calibration analysis is applied through a commercial software package on the basis of a full-wave finite-element method to calculate the complex propagation constant of the structure and to evaluate the radiation pattern. For experimental evaluation, an optimized grating coupler is fabricated using electron-beam lithography technique and plasma etching. An excellent agreement between simulations and measurements is observed, thereby validating the demonstrated method.

Nonlinear optical properties of calcium barium niobate epitaxial thin films.

We investigate the potential of epitaxial calcium barium niobate (CBN) thin film grown by pulsed laser deposition for optical frequency conversion. Using second harmonic generation (SHG), we analyze the polarization response of the generated signal to determine the ratios d15 / d32 and d33 / d32 of the three independent components of the second-order nonlinear susceptibility tensor in CBN thin film. In addition, a detailed comparison to the signal intensity obtained in a y-cut quartz allows us to measure the absolute value of these components in CBN thin film: d15 = 5 ± 2 pm / V, d32 = 3.1 ± 0.6 pm / V and d33 = 9 ± 2 pm / V.