Abstract

A scanning near-field optical microscopy study is undertaken on photonic crystal tapers. These tapers are used to couple a $3\mathrm{\mu m}$ wide multimode dielectric waveguide to a single-line defect monomode photonic crystal waveguide. Two kinds of taper, with or without a localized defect, are compared. Higher transmission efficiency is obtained when a defect is utilized. The near-field study at $1550\mathrm{nm}$ shows experimentally that this defect prevents leaky resonant states to appear in the taper and thus permits a decrease in out-of-plane losses. These observations are supported by band diagram calculations.

© 2009 Optical Society of America

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