Design and fabrication of polarization-insensitive hybrid solgel arrayed waveguide gratings

We report on the successful design and fabrication of a polarization-insensitive arrayed waveguide grating (AWG), using solgel-derived silica glass films formed on fused-silica substrates. By controlling the waveguide width and making the propagation constants of the polarizations equal, we have found it possible to fabricate polarization-insensitive solgel-based AWGs. Polarization-insensitive design improves the cross talk by approximately 10 dB in the dynamic range.