Abstract

It is difficult to make accurate measurements of the intrinsic attenuation of optical waveguides. Most methods rely either on monitoring the input and output powers to the waveguide and making some assumption of the coupling losses /1/ or alternatively measuring the scattering losses as a function of distance along the waveguide /2/, and trying to ensure that the collection efficiency of the measuring system remains constant at the different measurement points. For waveguides of low attenuation the difficulties inherent in these techniques are compounded by having to account for reflection at the end of the waveguides. A short pulse travelling in a waveguide undergoes attenuation and intermodal and intramodal dispersion. In the method described in this paper, the data on attenuation and dispersion of optical waveguides on silicon are obtained from a measurement of the short pulse characteristics using a synchroscan streak camera of 10 ps temporal resolution.

© 1989 Optical Society of America