Experimental demonstration of bidirectional light transfer in adiabatic waveguide structures

Opt Lett. 2016 Nov 15;41(22):5278-5281. doi: 10.1364/OL.41.005278.

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate a novel type of optical integrated structure consisting of three adiabatically coupled waveguides arranged in an N-shaped geometry. Unlike conventional adiabatic three-waveguide couplers mimicking the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage process which utilize solely the counter-intuitive coupling and, thus, operate only in one direction, our structure achieves complete bidirectional light transfer between two waveguides through the counter-intuitive and intuitive coupling in either direction over a wide wavelength range. Moreover, the light transfer through the intuitive coupling is more efficient and robust than through the counter-intuitive coupling.