An efficient and compact 1 × 8 beam splitter based on a tapered multimode Si waveguide at λ ₀ = 1330 nm

Abstract A tapered multimode and short S-bend Si waveguides are combined to form an efficient and compact 1 × 8 beam splitter at the wavelength of 1330 nm. The splitting ratios of the 8 output channels are ranging from 11.09% to 11.50%, which result in a low insertion loss ( IL ) of 0.42 dB. It is noted that the short S-bend Si waveguides can be used to suppress the bending loss of the hybrid mode that consists of the fundamental and first high-order modes, which explains the low IL of the proposed 1 × 8 beam splitter. The proposed structure facilitates the development of silicon photonic integrated circuit based high data rate communication chips.