An ultra-low crosstalk and broadband two-mode (de)multiplexer based on adiabatic couplers.

A novel adiabatic couplers (ACs) based broadband and fabrication-tolerant two-mode multiplexer (MUX) is designed using silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. Being different from the previously reported ACs-based scheme, the converted and multiplexed signals are on conventional modes, rather than supermodes. The experimental results are in good agreement with the simulations. Over a wavelength range of 75 nm measured, the crosstalk is lower than -20 dB, and the insertion loss is ~1 dB. The eye diagram and bit error rate measurements validate the good performance of the proposed mode MUX. The investigation on fabrication tolerance indicates reasonable performance degradation for a large gap deviation from -30 to 30 nm and etching depth deviation from -50 to 50 nm.