Bandpass engineering of lithographically scribed channel-waveguide Bragg gratings

We propose and demonstrate a powerful approach to spectral bandpass engineering (apodization) of one-dimensional channel-waveguide Bragg reflectors. Bandpass engineering is accomplished by precise photolithographic control of the length and the longitudinal placement of individual grating lines, which provides unique line-by-line diffractive amplitude and phase control. Channel-waveguide gratings that exhibit complex filtering functions have been fabricated and modeled. When a second-order apodization effect that comprises effective waveguide refractive-index variation with grating-line length is included in the simulation, extraordinary agreement between predicted and observed spectral passband profiles is obtained.