Photonic crystal membrane waveguides with low insertion losses

Abstract

We demonstrate experimentally that the fiber to fiber total insertion loss into a single-mode waveguide in a suspended photonic crystal membrane can be reduced to less than 10 dB (input, output, and propagation) without introducing any supplementary processing step (e.g., polymer deposition and etching). This is achieved through a suitable design of the waveguide end-facets minimizing the impedance mismatch and thereby the residual reflectance at the waveguide ends.