1

Efforts to Design a Short Coupler for a Photonic Bandgap Fiber

Accelerator
Christopher M.S. Sears
a
, Jiun-Haw Chu
Dec 15
th
, 2006

This report summarizes early eIIorts to design a coupler to couple light
into a photonic bandgap accelerator. This eIIort has Iocused on short
couplers that bring the energy in Irom another waveguide transverse to the
accelerating guide. A Iinite diIIerence time domain (FDTD) code called
MEEP
1
is used to simulate Iields. Although these initial eIIorts were not
successIul in producing an initial design structure, it is hoped that this
report may serve as the starting point Ior later work to the same end.
Section one outlines the motivation and design constraints Ior the coupler.
Section two describes MEEP, some oI its quirks, and example
programming steps useIul in building up and executing a simulation.
Section three gives the results oI these early design eIIorts and an
accompanying appendix lists the simulation Iile names with descriptions.
The Iinal section gives recommended directions to continue this work.

Section One: Motivation and Design Requirements
One oI the proposed goals oI the E163 project is to obtain acceleration with laser
light in optical scale structures. The motivation Ior this has been written about
extensively
2
and will not be repeated here. With this goal in mind, one oI the tasks
necessary is to couple in light to power the accelerator. Initial experimentation will
couple light in to the end oI a cleaved Iiber segment via a pellicle mirror. For longer term
experimentation this will not do. First, there is the obvious issue oI the electrons
traversing the pellicle and the resulting beam degradation. For a single prooI-oI-principle
experiment this is manageable (about 10 keV energy spread increase on a 30 MeV). A
second more subtle issue comes Irom the short length oI the Iiber accelerator relative to
the pellicle mirror size. The group velocity inside the Iiber is typically 0.5-0.7 c,
meaning that Ior 1 ps long laser & electron pulses, the two are overlapped Ior ~1 mm. A
Iiber piece longer than this will obtain no additional acceleration. By comparison, a
pellicle coupler will realistically take up ~ 1cm oI space upstream oI the Iiber, giving a
1:10 hit in the eIIective acceleration gradient just due to the coupler alone. For a
practical accelerator based on a PBG
3
Iiber, a microscopic coupler is clearly necessary.
A search oI the literature reveals many couplers already designed Irom the optics
community. Many oI these amount to butt coupling or inserting a single-mode index
guiding Iiber to the end oI the PBG Iiber. However, these are not an option as there must
be a clear space Ior the electrons to enter the accelerator. There are also many coupling
schemes that rely on a small perturbation to couple between two adjacent waveguides.
However, because oI the relatively small coupling strength per unit length, these couplers
are many hundreds to thousands oI wavelengths long in order to achieve appreciable

a
Email: cmsearsslac.stanIord.edu
2
coupling eIIiciency. This would again cause a substantial hit in eIIective gradient due to
the size oI the coupler.
The eIIort then is to design a coupler that is both side coupling and short in the
beam direction. In addition the coupler must leave clear a vacuum channel Ior the
electrons to enter the accelerating structure. Such couplers are a standard component in
current RF accelerators. However, these designs have that substantial beneIit oI using
metallic surIaces to conIine Iields. In the case oI optical wavelengths, metal surIaces are
strongly absorbing and cannot eIIiciently be used as optical waveguides even over the
short distances needed Ior an optical accelerator. Metal surIaces also have a much lower
damage threshold than do dielectrics at optical Irequencies; typically a Iactor oI 10 or
more lower. A successIul coupler should thereIore also be dielectric. It would also be
preIerable that the peak Iield in the coupler be equal to or less than the peak Iield in the
accelerating waveguide. The accelerating gradient will ultimately be limited by damage
to the structure due to the laser intensity.
To reiterate, the main constraints in a coupler design envisioned thus Iar are: all
dielectric, side-coupled, compact in the beam propagation direction, and leave a material
Iree region Ior the electrons to enter the waveguide. The design should be optimized to
keep the peak Iield anywhere in the dielectric material as low as possible. While this
may seem very constraining, there are still many decisions leIt open in design. Should
the coupler couple to Iree-space laser modes or to another waveguide? What is the nature
oI this coupling waveguide: slab guide, index guiding Iiber, another PBG structure? How
is light preIerentially coupled in the beam direction; is a Bragg mirror necessary? These
are the questions that remain open to design.

Section Two: MEEP
The primary simulation tool Ior designing the coupler has been MEEP, an FDTD
code written by the MIT photonics group
4
. The code has two interIace options, an
executable binary run with a scheme based command Iile and a library Ior C that can
be called Ior greater customization. The scheme interIace is discussed here and used in
simulations throughout this document. The MIT photonics group also has a Irequency
domain egienmode solver MPB
5
useIul Ior Iinding bandgaps in photonic crystals as well
as Iinding modes oI light trapped in photonic crystal deIects. Prior work has used MPB
to Iind accelerating modes in a photonic crystal Iiber
6
. This work was used as a starting
point in part oI the coupler simulations. MPB uses the same Scheme based control Iile as
MEEP, allowing Ior easy sharing between Irequency domain and time domain
simulation.
MEEP is installed on the SLAC unix cluster which allows both Ior interactive
execution and batch jobs
b
. MEEP is well documented on its website
4
including a manual
and example Iiles. A Iew quirks were noted during our simulation eIIorts. The Iirst was
Iound in attempting to duplicate the modes Iound via MPB in MEEP. The Iiber is
seemingly a 2D simulation giving the uniIorm geometry in the z-direction. However, iI a
2D problem is speciIied in the control Iile, all z-data including k
z
values are ignored,
making it impossible to Iind speed-oI-light modes. Essentially, MEEP instead solves Ior

b
See http://www.slac.stanIord.edu/BFROOT/www/Computing/Environment/Tools/Batch/ Ior batch
tutorial.

3
resonator modes with k
z
0 rather than modes with
energy propogating in z. In order to get MEEP to
solve Ior propagating modes, the problem must be
declared a 3D problem. The problem can, however,
be just one mesh point thick in z making the run
time the same as a 2D problem. Doing this, MEEP
seems to correctly read the commanded k
z
value and
solve Ior the correct modes. MEEP reproduced the
MPB result to within 1 in phase velocity at the
same Irequency.
A useIul Ieature currently absent as a built is
Iunction in MEEP is the ability to load a Iield Irom
a prior MEEP or MPB simulation Ior use as an
excitation source. In particular, it would be greatly
helpIul to be able to use the Iield Irom the 2D
accelerating mode simulation as the source in our
coupler work. Fortunately, it is possible with a bit
oI scheme code to do Iield loading by hand. See appendix 1, Iile 'coup1.ctl Ior code.
The Iield Irom a prior simulation is saved to an hdI5 Iile and converted to a set oI ascii
Iiles, one Ior each component. These are then loaded into memory and read by a scheme
Iunction called by MEEP excitation. The coupler ctl Iile assumes prior knowledge oI the
geometry Ior the excitation. The Iield loading code could be improved upon by adding a
header or separate geometry description Iile.

Section Three: Simulation Efforts Thus Far
The Iirst simulations done with MEEP were benchmark tests to see iI MEEP
could reproduce calculations Iound in literature or in our own work with other codes. As
mentioned in the previous section, one simulation successIully reproduced the
accelerating mode in the enlarged core, Eddie Lin Iiber. Another similar simulation
attempted to duplicate results Iound via the code CUDOS
7
. We were unable to duplicate
the CUDOS result however, so too did an attempt by Cho-Kuen Ng using T3P
8
, a Iinite
element time domain code. This lack oI success casts some doubt the validity oI the
CUDOS result, especially since the CUDOS calculations themselves had some issues
with convergence
c
. Figure 2 shows the real Iiber cross-section, the CUDOS
approximation, and solution.

c
Talk to Bob Siemann or Bob Noble Ior Iurther insight on the CUDOS calculations.
Figure 1 Accelerating mode in Eddie
Lin Iiber Iound using MEEP
duplicating previous result Irom MPB.
The core radius is 1.34a, hole radii
0.35a, and Irequency oI 1.29*2ac/a.

4

Effort 1: The Hexapole Resonator
Another benchmark test began by duplicating a waveguide-resonator coupling on
a photonic crystal slab. In the resonator three dimension conIinement oI light is achieved
with index conIinement in z-direction (normal to the slab plane) and photonic band gap
conIinement in xy-direction (parallel to the slab plane).
This system has been extensively studied Ior its
potential application in cavity QED or Integrated
optics
9
, both theoretically and experimentally, and has
demonstrated low loss waveguide-resonator coupling.
The resonator is Iormed by Iilled in the center hole, and
changing the distance and radius oI six nearest neighbor
holes, which can achieve a high Q value up to 10
6
oI a
hexapole mode. A waveguide is added by Iilling a line
oI holes and increasing the radius oI holes adjacent to
the waveguide. These waveguides are placed in the
'shoulder oI resonator (see Iig 4), so that can
eIIiciently couple to the hexapole mode due to
symmetry oI resonant mode.
The photonic crystal slab is made oI silicon (dielectric constant epsilon 12.1)
with thickness (t 0.5). It is Iabricated with an array oI triangular lattice (lattice constant
a 1) oI air holes (radius 0.25). We divided our simulation into two steps. The Iirst
step is to reproduce the result oI hexgonal point deIect resonant mode. Then we add the
two line deIect waveguide at the 'shoulder oI point deIect and simulate the coupling
process.
In the point deIect cavity structure, in addition to Iill one air-hole, the six nearest-
neighbor holes (NNHs) are made small(radius 0.23) and pushed away Irom the center
oI symmetry (distance 1.18). As the size oI the modiIied single-cell cavity increases,
the hexapole mode is pulled down Irom the air-band, with resonant Irequency 0.28 (a/).
In our simulation, we produced a Iinite geometry with 12x12 lattice holes. More than one
resonant mode can be Iound near Irequency 0.28, with Q Iactors Iar less than Kim's result
(Q~5000).

(m)
(

m
)
|E
z
|


15 10 5 0 5 10 15
15
10
5
0
5
10
15
20 15 10 5 0 5 10 15 20
20
15
10
5
0
5
10
15
20
Full fibre
Figure 2: LeIt: SEM image oI Thorlabs HC-1550 air core Iiber. Center CUDOS approximation oI
Iiber. Right, E
z
Iield oI accelerating mode at 1.89m.
Figure 3: Geometry oI hexapole
resonator.
5
Neglecting the inconsistence with Kim's work, we
perIorm another simulation combining the waveguides
and cavity. The waveguide is made by Iilling in a line oI
holes and increase the radius oI Iirst side-holes at both
sides, which can liIt the waveguide modes dispersion to
match the resonant mode Irequency. Our simulation
diIIers Irom Kim's work by generating source at the end
oI waveguide instead oI launching resonant modes. The
H
z
Iield map is shown in Iigure 4. It can be seen that the
energy is well conIined in the waveguides and cavity. It
reached steady state at about 100 cycles.
In order to adapt this work to our
purpose, we gradually deIorm this
structure to match our accelerating
structure. We start by putting a small air
hole in the center oI cavity. Later we
modiIy the radius NNHs and side-holes
to see iI we can also adiabatically
transIorm the original modes to desired
modes. It turns out this method is
actually very hard to work because the
modes in Kim's work and the
accelerating modes belongs to diIIerent
representation oI z-direction mirror
symmetry. It is impossible to transIorm
a state to a topologically diIIerent state
by perturbing Hamiltonian.
ThereIore, a more reasonable
way is to start directly with an Eddie Lin
Iiber in the center, and construct a PC-
slab waveguide that can couple to
accelerating mode in Iiber air core.
Figure 4: Shoulder coupler to
hexapole resonator.
Figure 5: Geometry Ior coupler design to modiIied
hexapole resonator structure.
6
Effort 2: Eddie Lin Fiber
AIter these benchmarking runs we attempt to adapt or expand the simulations to
include couplers. In the case oI the Eddie Lin Iiber the Iiber length was increased to
some 20 wavelengths and coupler added. The Iirst coupler ('coup1.ctl, Iigure 6) added
a bragg reIlector at the end oI the Iiber with a slab waveguide region in the Iirst bragg
layer with the hope that light would couple into the transverse slab waveguide Irom the
accelerator core. The slab waveguide region was created by removing a set oI holes
transversely to the main guiding hole. This was done symmetrically, partly to speed up
simulation time but also with the thought that a symmetric coupler would be easier to
create as a Iirst attempt. The Bragg reIlector was simulated both with the air holes
running through the multilayer and without.
SigniIicant diIIiculty arose in matching the Iiber Irequency with the conIinement
in the transverse waveguide. Although modes were Iound Ior the transverse waveguide
at lower Irequency (about 0.3 a
-1
) there did not seem to be conIinement at the higher
Irequency oI the Iiber (1.29 a
-1
). There may have also been Iurther issue with the bragg
reIlector since the reIlection only occurs Ior a narrow range oI angles around the
orthogonal while the waveguide we`re attempting to couple to is in a parallel plane to the
reIlector.
A better idea Ior coupling was Iound in a literature
search oI other transverse coupling structures. The coupler
combined a single mode index-guiding Iiber with slab
waveguide on a waIer using a grating structure
10,11
. Unlike
many other Iiber grating structures which use small gratings
as a perturbation, these gratings are large compared to the
slab waveguide and thereIore cannot be designed using
perturbative approximations. Wang
d
used a 2D FDTD
simulation combined with a micro-genetic algorithm to
optimize various grating designs including a simple
rectangular grating, a slanted grating, and a multilayer
grating. The best design achieved an eIIiciency oI ~85.
Extending this design to our purposes present obvious

d
A copy oI B. Wang`s thesis is located on the weblog in the documents library.
Figure 6: First coupler attempt. LeIt: cross-section oI coupler region with transverse slab waveguide.
Right: Vertical cut in Iiber mid-plane showing multilayer region (black) and silica (grey) as well as
vacuum (white).
Figure 7: Schematic oI
grating coupler Irom slab
waveguide to index guiding
Iiber.
7
additional challenges. In our case the Iiber is a PBG structure having a much more
complicated mode pattern. The coupler must also leave a hole Ior the electrons to enter
the PBG Iiber.
An initial eIIort in designing a grating
based coupler Ior the PBG Iiber is coup2.ctl. This
Iile uses the same Eddie Lin Iiber and Iield
loading as previously mentioned. The coupler
region is now a set oI gratings atop a slab
waveguide. For simplicity, the requirement oI
hole through the coupler Ior the electrons is
ignored. Only simple rectangular blocks have
been tried thus Iar. UnIortunately, early eIIorts
have met with little success although results were
only looked at qualitatively Irom the Iield maps.






Section Four: Recommendations for Continuation of Work
While the authors are leaving this project to Iocus on other work it is hoped that
this simulation work will be resumed by others in the near Iuture. We recommend that
the coupler design eIIort be continued using FDTD simulation in MEEP. The most
promising design currently is to continue with the grating structure at the end oI Eddie
Iiber. Once an initial working design is Iound, optimization using some sort oI micro-
genetic algorithm could prove useIul. Such optimization routines are already available in
MATLAB.




Figure 8: E
z
map oI Iield Irom grating
coupler design attempt.
8
Appendix 1: Simulation Files
These Iiles are located at v:\ardb\e163\simulation\meep\

CudosHC1550.ctl 2D simulation oI the Cudos approximation to the Thorlabs HC1550
air core Iiber. No SOL accelerating modes were Iound casting some doubt on the
CUDOS calculations. However, the simulation also has some sort oI instability due to
geometry artiIacts.

EdlinIib.ctl 2D simulation oI the Eddie Iiber with an enlarged core. This Iile is used to
conIirm the mode Iound in MPB and to generate Iield maps Ior excitation in coupler
simulations.

Coup1.ctl The Iile is the Iirst attempt at a coupler solution Ior the Eddie Lin, enlarged
core Iiber. This Iile Ieatures Iield loading oI a previous solution Ior the PBG Iiber mode.
The ascii text Iiles *.Iield are arrays oI Iield values on mesh points. An array in Scheme
is expressed as a list oI lists (list (list .) (list.) .) The coupler uses a bragg reIlector
at the end oI the Iiber and a transverse waveguide Iormed by removing a line oI holes in
PBG structure transverse to the core.

Coup2.ctl Similar to coup1.ctl, this simulation instead has a grating structure at the end
oI the Iiber.

Simpgrating.ctl simpliIied version oI coup2.ctl that also allows Ior command line
setting oI simulation parameters; in particular the width oI the gratings D.

Tranwg.ctl a look at the modes oI a transverse waveguide Ior coup1.ctl. The Iile
produces band diagrams or single mode Iield maps as needed.

*.Iield ascii text Iiles generated Irom a matlab script that reads the hdI5 Iield map Iiles
Irom edlinIib.ctl. This text Iiles are loaded by coup1 & coup2.ctl

9


1
Ardavan Farjadpour, David Roundy, Alejandro Rodriguez, Mihai Ibanescu, Peter Bermel, J. D.
Joannopoulos, Steven G. Johnson, and GeoIIrey Burr, "Improving accuracy by subpixel smoothing in
FDTD," Optics Letters, in press (2006)
2
Siemann et. al., E163 proposal
3
For an overview oI photonic crystals see Joannopoulos, et al, 'Photonic Crystals: Molding the Ilow oI
Light Princeton University Press, 1995
4
http://ab-initio.mit.edu/wiki/index.php/MainPage
5
Steven G. Johnson and J. D. Joannopoulos, "Block-iterative Irequency-domain methods Ior Maxwell's
equations in a planewave basis," Optics Express 8, no. 3, 173-190 (2001)
6
Cowan, B. ; Javanmard, M. ; Siemann, R. ~Photonic crystal laser accelerator structures. Proceedings oI
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7
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2322-2330 (2002).
8
Contact Ng, Cho-Kuen Ior inIo on T3P.
9
G. H. Kim et al.'Coupling oI small, low-loss hexapole mode with photonic crystal slab waveguide
mode,Opt. Express 12, 66246631(2004)
10
B. Wang, J. Jiang, and G. Nordin, "Compact slanted grating couplers," Opt. Express 12, 3313-3326
(2004)
11
B. Wang, J. Jiang, D. M. Chambers, J. Cai, and G. P. Nordin, "StratiIied waveguide grating coupler Ior
normal Iiber incidence," Opt. Lett. 30, 845-847 (2005)