Dense and Sharp Resonance Peaks in Stretched Moiré Waveguides

Abstract

In this article, we demonstrate dense resonant peaks in the transmission spectra of a rectangular waveguide inscribed with a stretched moiré pattern. We investigated an array of silicon waveguides with sinusoidally modulated cladding of varying depth of modulation. The investigation reveals a critical depth of modulation that splits the geometries into weakly scattering and strongly scattering regimes. Geometries in the weakly scattering regime resemble Bragg waveguides with shallow cladding modulation, whereas in the strongly scattering regime, the geometries resemble chains of isolated dielectric particles. The guided mode photonic bandgap for geometries in the strongly scattering regime is much larger than that of the weakly scattering regime. By inscribing stretched moiré patterns in the strongly scattering regime, we show that a large number of sharp peaks can be created in the transmission spectra of the waveguide. All periodic stretched moiré patterns can be identified with an R parameter. The R parameter indicates the ratio of the supercell period of the stretched system to the unstretched system. Our empirical study shows that the density of peaks linearly increases with R. The multiple resonance peaks evolve along well-defined trajectories with quality factor defined by exponential functions of R.