Efficient nonadiabatic planar waveguide tapers

We report taper designs with high transmission efficiencies and with lengths shorter than those needed for adiabatic operation. The tapering occurs between rectangular optical waveguides with the same vertical silicon-on-insulator layer structure, but with different horizontal widths, namely 0.5 and 2.0 /spl mu/m, and for taper lengths between 0.5 and 3.0 /spl mu/m. After a comparison between two different optimization methods in a two-dimensional calculation scheme, one of these is repeated using three-dimensional calculations. The results show that, also in the length region where conventional linear and parabolic tapers are not yet adiabatic, tapers with a high efficiency can be designed by applying complex taper structures with more degrees of freedom.