The birefringence of two-dimensional photonic crystal line defect waveguides, which is larger than that of the conventional dielectric waveguides, is numerically investigated by finite-difference time-domain scheme and spatial Fourier transform method. The birefringence line waveguides are more suitable for polarization phase engineering than the bulk perfect photonic crystal structure because they provide low beam divergence and light transmission loss. The zeroth-order quarter- and half-wave plates based on the two-dimensional photonic crystal line waveguide have merits of high transmission efficiency and low interference with other components in photonic integrated circuits. Moreover, the designed zeroth-order wave plates have achromatic characteristic with high phase accuracy ( ±0.012π ) in a large frequency range (about 16 nm) around the telecommunication band (1550 nm). In addition, for realizing the relatively high order wave plates, the formed birefringence method is introduced in detail. The physical mechanism of formed birefringence is bringing path difference between two different polarizations. Based on the formed birefringence, the relative high-order (about 80th-order) WP is achieved by line-defect photonic crystal waveguides. The wave plates presented in this letter have many potential applications in future photonic integrated circuits such as integrated optical communications, polarization control and integrated depolarizing.

Date Published: 26 October 2009
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 7516, Photonics and Optoelectronics Meetings (POEM) 2009: Optoelectronic Devices and Integration, 751603 (26 October 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.843462

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7516:
Photonics and Optoelectronics Meetings (POEM) 2009: Optoelectronic Devices and Integration
Zishen Zhao; Ray T. Chen; Yong Chen; Jinzhong Yu; Junqiang Sun; Weiwei Dong, Editor(s)