Abstract

Recently, there has been considerable interest in resonant optical waveguide (ROW) arrays.¹ These phase-locked arrays have shown the ability to operate coherently with diffraction-limited output power both in the cw and pulsed modes. The strong optical mode confinement within each element provides a mechanism for strong mode discrimination by introducing losses in the cladding layers to favor the resonant mode and improve mode discrimination. We treat the ROW array as a stack of reflectors to compute the array modes and their corresponding losses. In particular, the effect of the right and left bounding mediums on the performance of the array is studied. We show that when the effective index of the bounding mediums approaches the effective index of the antiguiding layer or the cladding layer, mode discrimination deteriorates and disappears when the effective indices are equal. This phenomenon is primarily due to the high radiation losses at both ends of the array by the resonant mode.

© 1992 Optical Society of America