Prism coupler

A prism coupler is a prism designed to couple a substantial fraction of the power contained in a beam of light (e.g., a laser beam) into a thin film to be used as a waveguide without the need for precision polishing of the edge of the film, without the need for sub-micrometer alignment precision of the beam and the edge of the film, and without the need for matching the numerical aperture of the beam to the film. Using a prism coupler, a beam coupled into a thin film can have a diameter hundreds of times the thickness of the film. Invention of the coupler contributed to the initiation of a field of study known as integrated optics. A prism coupler is a prism designed to couple a substantial fraction of the power contained in a beam of light (e.g., a laser beam) into a thin film to be used as a waveguide without the need for precision polishing of the edge of the film, without the need for sub-micrometer alignment precision of the beam and the edge of the film, and without the need for matching the numerical aperture of the beam to the film. Using a prism coupler, a beam coupled into a thin film can have a diameter hundreds of times the thickness of the film. Invention of the coupler contributed to the initiation of a field of study known as integrated optics. The theory underlying the prism coupler was first published in the Soviet Union. This work was not known in the US. Starting in 1969, Shubert, Harris, and Polky at the University of Washington, and, independently, Tien, Ulrich, and Martin, at Bell Laboratories described the first experiments with prism coupling and its underlying theory. This was done with a view toward device applications of thin films. A prism coupler is used to couple the power from an incident laser beam into a thin film. The film lies on a substrate such as a glass microscope slide and might have a thickness of the order of the wavelength of the incident light (0.550 μm for green light). The refractive index of the film is made greater than that of the glass slide, the film can serve as a dielectric planar waveguide for light via total internal reflection off the film–glass interface (and film–air interface). The prism coupler consists of a near cube of high–refractive-index glass and a second thin film at the bottom that contacts the waveguide film and serves the function of partially containing the guided wave over the coupling distance. The thin film at the bottom of the prism is referred to as the tunneling layer. The tunneling layer must have a lower refractive index than the waveguide film and may actually be implemented as a layer of air. The thickness of the tunneling layer will be on the order of a fraction of a wavelength (tens to hundreds of nanometers for visible light).