Optical power divider and fabrication method thereof

Abstract

An optical power divider using a beam separator and a beam expander, and a fabrication method therefor. The optical power divider includes an input optical waveguide having an input port for receiving incident light, for guiding the light incident via the input port, a plurality of output optical waveguides having at least two output ports, for outputting the light incident via the input optical waveguide to the output ports, wherein the number of output optical waveguides is equal to that of the output ports, and a beam separator located at a branch area in which the light incident on the input optical waveguide diverges toward the output optical waveguides, the beam separator being made of a material having a refractive index lower than the core of the input and output optical waveguides, for separating the light to the output optical waveguides with a predetermined ratio. Therefore, the length of the optical power divider becomes short and insertion loss can be lowered. Also, an optical power divider for the special application, providing different splitting ratios between inner and outer output ports, can be easily designed by controlling the lengths of a side of each beam separator and beam expanders, and the splitting ratio of the output optical power of the optical power divider can be controlled. Also, the cost of fabricating the optical power divider can be reduced.