Design of Polarization-Sensitive Meta Micro-Reflectors in Bragg Grating Waveguide

Abstract

Bragg-Grating-Waveguide (BGW) delay lines are commonly used in transmission mode, owing to the significant elevation in group index observed at the edge of the stopband. However, achieving delays often necessitates structures with a larger footprint, such as cascaded or spiral designs, which consume a substantial amount of chip estate. Recent approaches to optimize chip space involve round-trip configurations with reflectors, but these can restrict bandwidth and cause mode conversion. Our study introduces an efficient solution: a meta-reflector for TE0 mode, enabling double delays via a single path, while also employing a step taper in TM0 mode to couple the TM signal into a strip waveguide, within a 1.9 × 2.6 µm2 area. Simulations show that in TE mode, there is a peak attenuation of -0.18 dB within the 1530–1590 nm wavelength spectrum, and in TM mode, the loss reaches -4.73 dB across the 1500–1600 nm band. In the computation of losses, the customary impact of the Bragg grating waveguide was disregarded, with attention concentrated exclusively on the design of the reflector. © 2024 SPIE.