Low-loss planar lightwave circuit OADM with high isolation and no polarization dependence

A passive optical add-drop multiplexer with 1 dB of insertion loss and 36 dB of isolation is fabricated by writing Bragg gratings in a waveguide Mach-Zehnder interferometer using ArF excimer laser light. The spectral properties and bit-error-rate performance of the device are fully characterized using polarized light.