Abstract

Photonic crystals have generated a great deal of interest due to their potential to control light propagation.¹ It has been shown that a photonic crystal waveguide, which is realized by inserting a linear defect inside the lattice, is capable of supporting small bending radius waveguide bends with almost total transmission.² This feature is important for the formation of dense integrated optics. Another important feature necessary for practical integrated optics based on photonic crystals is the efficient coupling of light between photonic crystal waveguides and optical fibers. In this paper, we show that an optical fiber can be directly coupled to a photonic crystal waveguide with over 90% power transmission using grating assisted contra-directional coupling.

© 2002 Optical Society of America