Abstract

Excitation and re-emission of guided modes in a planar waveguide grating structure is known to result in sharp features in wavelength and angular reflectance spectra [1]. By physical nature, the resonant reflection from a waveguide grating is similar to the Wood anomalies of light diffraction at metallic gratings associated with excitation and re-emission of surface plasmons. Due to much lower absorption in dielectric structures, the quality factor of the resonant waveguide mode excitation can be very high. To the best of our knowledge the highest reported finesse is 1.5⋅10⁴ [2]. Potential applications include spectral filtering [3-5], optical switches [2], optical sensors [6], polarization control in lasers [7], and spatial filtering of lateral modes in large volume lasers [8]. Special cases of normal incidence [9] and two-dimensional gratings [10] have been considered. In this talk we summarize recent achievements in study of the resonant reflection of light by waveguide gratings and report our latest results on lateral mode control in lasers using the waveguide grating mirror.

© 2002 Optical Society of America