Optical coupling and splitting with two parallel waveguide tapers

A coupling and splitting device comprising a width taper and a spatial-modulated subwavelength grating waveguide (SSGW) is proposed. The width taper is a waveguide with increasing width and the SSGW is a waveguide grating whose width and thickness are constant but the filling factor increases along the light propagation. Thus, the effective index of the subwavelength grating increases according to the effective medium theory. Light of orthogonal polarizations from a single-mode fiber can be coupled efficiently with the two parallel tapers. Furthermore, the coupled lights of orthogonal polarizations in the two tapers can be further split with connecting bent waveguides. Fabrication of the device is fully compatible with current complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology.