Air Core Thickness Dependence of Propagation Loss of Slab Hollow Waveguide

Abstract

We present the core thickness dependence of the propagation loss and the polarization dependence loss (PDL) of hollow waveguides of various air core thicknesses. The addition of phase-control layers to GaAs/AlAs multilayer mirrors enables us to reduce the PDL by one order of magnitude. The propagation loss and the PDL of a 5 µm air core hollow waveguide are 2.8 dB/cm and 1.7 dB/cm, respectively, which are currently limited by the reflectivity (0.998) of the GaAs/AlAs multilayer mirrors.