Dynamic Optical Coupler using a Dammann grating

摘要

Driven by the fast development of fiber communication networks, there exists a strong need for a dynamic coupler with a large number of output ports. In our work, we developed a dynamic optical coupler by employing a specially designed Dammann grating that consists of two areas, which are the Dammann-grating area and the blank area. When incoming beams entirely impinge on the Dammann-grating area of the plate, this device demonstrates 1x8 dynamic optical coupler with good uniformity of 0.03 and low insertion loss of about 10.7 dB for each channel as a splitter at the wavelength of 1550 nm. When incoming beams entirely impinge on the blank area of the plate, this device achieves a low insertion loss of 0.43 dB as a combiner. Therefore, this device can achieve the beam splitter and combiner as a switch between them according to the relative shift between two areas of the plate. The experimental results are reported in detail in this paper.