Femtosecond laser application to PLC optical devices and packaging

Abstract

Using tightly focused femtosecond laser pulses, we produce an optical waveguide and devices in transparent materials. This technique has the potential to generate not only channel waveguides, but also three-dimensional optical devices. In this paper, an optical splitter and U-grooves, which are used for fiber alignment, are simultaneously fabricated in a fused silica glass using near-IR femtosecond laser pulses. The fiber-aligned optical splitter has a low insertion loss, less than 4 dB, including an intrinsic splitting loss of 3 dB and excess loss due to the passive alignment of a single-mode fiber. Finally, we present an output field pattern, demonstrating that the splitting ratio of the optical splitter becomes approximately 1:1.