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A new simulation design of three-mode division (de)multiplexer based on a trident coupler and two cascaded 3 × 3 MMI silicon waveguides

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Abstract

We propose a design of a silicon three-mode (de)multiplexing device based on a trident and two cascaded 3 × 3 multimode interferometers. Input lights at fundamental, first-order, and second-order modes of transverse electric (TE) polarization are simultaneously converted to fundamental TE mode and demultiplexed at different ports at the outputs. The design is carried out through both theoretical analysis and numerical simulation using three dimensional-beam propagation method and effective index method. The results show a successful three-mode multiplexing in 100 nm wavelength range around 1550 nm with low insertion loss (< 0.71 dB) and crosstalk (− 18 dB). The proposed device also exhibit a small footprint (5 µm × 400 µm) that makes it potential for not only wavelength-division multiplexing and multimode-division multiplexing transmission systems, but also high bitrate and compact on-chip silicon photonics integrated circuits.

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Acknowledgements

This research is funded by Vietnam National Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED) under grant program for excellent scientific publication.

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Correspondence to Anh Tuan Tran.

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Tran, A.T., Truong, D.C., Nguyen, H.T. et al. A new simulation design of three-mode division (de)multiplexer based on a trident coupler and two cascaded 3 × 3 MMI silicon waveguides. Opt Quant Electron 50, 426 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11082-017-1248-4

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