Low bend loss waveguides and photonic bandgaps enabled by high index contrast modifications

¹ MQ Photonics Research Centre, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia
² Centre for Ultrahigh-bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems, (CUDOS), Australia
³ CEIT and Tecnun, University of Navarra, Pº Manuel de Lardizabal, Donostia-San Sebastian,, 20018 Spain
⁴ Macquarie University Research Centre in Astronomy, Astrophysics and Astrophotonics, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia
⁵ Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO), PO Box 915, North Ryde NSW 1670 Australia
⁶ Sydney Institute for Astronomy (SIFA), School of Physics, University of Sydney, 2006, Australia

^* e-mail: simon.gross@mq.edu.au

Abstract

We present a novel process to fabricate high index contrast waveguides in boro-aluminosilicate glass based on differential thermal post-annealing. Firstly, large high index contrast multimode waveguides are inscribed and subsequently annealed to achieve single-mode operation. We applied this technique to significantly increase the throughput of 3D astrophotonic devices and to demonstrate anti-resonant (ARROW) guiding in a laser written structure for the first time.