Design feasibility of a single-mode optical isolator

Isolator conditions are derived by a perturbation method for optical slab isolators in which magnetooptical crystal and anisotropic dielectric crystal films are integrated for reciprocal and non-reciprocal TE-TM mode conversion functions. The general expressions show that isolator conditions can be satisfied for any combination of wavelength, normalized frequency, waveguide thickness, and gyrotropic constant of the magnetooptical crystal by appropriate choice of the magnitude of the birefringence of the top layer film and its crystal orientation angle. Design examples of single-mode isolators with waveguide thicknesses of 4, 4.5, and 5 μm are given at 1.55 μm wavelength. It is also pointed out that isolators of the above design can be fabricated with Y3Fe5O12, Y1.5Gd1.5Fe3O12, and Tm3Fe5O12crystal films as magnetooptical materials and a solid solution of LiNbO3and LiTaO3as an anisotropic film. Tolerance in the required film thickness becomes less stringent with this design. Isolation of more than 20 dB with an insertion loss of less than 0.12 dB is feasible without any parameter adjustment, even when there is as much as a ten percent deviation in the film thickness.