WAVE-GUIDE OPTICAL ISOLATOR - A NEW DESIGN

A new design of a thin film waveguide optical isolator is described. It is composed of a nonreciprocal mode converter by the Faraday effect, a reciprocal mode converter by the Cotton-Mouton effect, an integrated mirror, and TE-mode selectors. Its mode transfer matrices are derived. Numerical calculations show that wider tolerances of the film parameters and smaller dimensions are obtained compared with the ordinary tandem type waveguide isolators without the integrated mirror. This structure is free of the problem of the localized control of the directions of the magnetization, which has been required for the ordinary tandem type waveguide isolator.