Severing the link between modal order and group index using hybrid guided space-time modes

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that hybrid guided space-time modes in multimode waveguides can fundamentally alter the traditional link between modal order and group index, enabling dispersion-free modes with independently tunable properties.

Contribution

It introduces hybrid guided space-time modes that decouple modal order from group index and dispersion in planar multimode waveguides, a novel approach in waveguide physics.

Findings

Hybrid modes can be dispersion-free and have tunable group indices.

Transverse size of hybrid modes is independent of modal order.

Experimental verification in a silica waveguide confirms theoretical predictions.

Abstract

The structure of an optical waveguide determines the characteristics of its guided modes, such as their spatial profile and group index. General features are shared by modes regardless of the waveguiding structure; for example, modal dispersion is inevitable in multimode waveguides, every mode experiences group-velocity dispersion, and higher-order modes are usually slower than their lower-order counterparts. We show here that such trends can be fundamentally altered -- altogether severing the link between modal order and group index hybrid and eliminating dispersion -- by exploiting hybrid guided space-time modes in a planar multimode waveguide. Such modes are confined in one-dimension by the waveguide and in the other by the spatio-temporal spectral structure of the field itself. Direct measurements of the modal group delays confirm that the group index for low-loss, dispersion-free, hybrid space-time modes can be each tuned away from the group index of the conventional mode of same order, and that the transverse size of these hybrid modes can be varied independently of the modal order and group index. These findings are verified in a few-mode planar waveguide consisting of a 25.5-mm-long, 4-$\mu$m-thick silica film deposited on a MgF$_2$ substrate.