Resonant Brewster filters with absentee layers

A method for lowering the sideband levels associated with the spectral response of resonant waveguide-grating filters is presented. With a TM-polarized incident wave near the Brewster angle, the filter sidebands are suppressed by application of a half-wavelength absentee waveguide layer and an arbitrary-thickness grating layer. Adjusting the thickness of the grating layer permits control of the filter linewidth without appreciably affecting the sideband features. To verify the theoretical prediction, we fabricated and tested a double-layer waveguide-grating filter. It exhibited a peak efficiency of 82.4%, with sideband reflection levels below 0.6%, over a 95-nm spectral range. (C) 2002 Optical Society of America.