Abstract
We report what is to our knowledge the first operation of a planar dielectric tapered-waveguide laser. The waveguide laser is fabricated by potassium-ion exchange in -doped BK7 glass and consists of a single-mode channel waveguide of a few micrometers’ width followed by a linear taper up to a broad region with a width of . A slope efficiency of 42% is found both in the tapers and in standard channel waveguides fabricated upon the same substrate, indicating that the tapers and the channels have similar internal losses; hence the low-loss nature of the tapered beam expansion. The output from either end of the tapered structure is found to be nearly diffraction limited.
© 2000 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
C. L. Bonner, C. T. A. Brown, D. P. Shepherd, W. A. Clarkson, A. C. Tropper, D. C. Hanna, and B. Ferrand
Opt. Lett. 23(12) 942-944 (1998)
Zhi-Mei Qi, Kiminori Itoh, Masayuki Murabayashi, and C. R. Lavers
Opt. Lett. 25(19) 1427-1429 (2000)
J. E. Gortych and D. G. Hall
Opt. Lett. 11(2) 100-102 (1986)