Efficient mode coupling between a few-mode fiber and multi-mode photonic chip with low crosstalk

The mode-division multiplexing technology has been developing slowly in the field of fiber-chip-fiber optical interconnects, mainly limited by the inefficient mode coupling between few-mode fiber and multi-mode photonic chip. Here we propose and design a multi-mode coupler composed of tapered few-mode fiber and silicon integrated multistage waveguide tapers, which allows the direct coupling between high-order fiber modes and high-order waveguide modes with high coupling efficiency and low crosstalk. Based on the edge coupling scheme, the six linear polarization modes (LP01x/y, LP11ax/y, LP11bx/y) in few-mode fiber are firstly coupled into the integrated waveguide with low insertion loss, then the input modes are converted to the desired waveguide modes (TE0, TE1, TE2, TM0, TM1, TM2) with low mode crosstalk relying on the mode evolution principle. The obtained results show that the coupling efficiency is higher than 87%, while for the mode conversion process, the efficiency is higher than 99% and the mode crosstalk is lower than -25 dB. The favorable performance achieved may open new perspectives for diverse mode-division multiplexing applications, enabling efficient capacity scaling in fiber-chip-fiber optical interconnects and optical communication systems. (c) 2022 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement