Improved 60° bend transmission of submicron-width waveguides defined in two-dimensional photonic crystals

We compare quantitatively the transmission properties of various 60° bends carved into a photonic crystal based on a two-dimensional triangular lattice of holes perforating a GaAs-based heterostructure. The bends are inserted into channel waveguides defined by three missing rows in the photonic crystal. Their design is inspired by some ideas from classical integrated optics. We show experimentally that in some cases the transmission of the bent waveguide is fairly high, up to 70%, within a bandwidth of 3%, e.g., 30 nm at 1 μm, sufficient to contemplate wavelength-division-multiplexing applications. The observed performance opens the opportunity to implement a variety of optical functions in view of future photonic crystal integrated circuits for which low-loss bends constitute an essential building block.