Broadband photonic transport between waveguides by adiabatic elimination

We propose an adiabatic method for the robust transfer of light between the two outer waveguides in a three-waveguide directional coupler. Unlike the established technique inherited from stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP), the method proposed here is symmetric with respect to an exchange of the left and right waveguides in the structure and permits the transfer in both directions. The technique uses the adiabatic elimination of the middle waveguide together with level crossing and adiabatic passage in an effective two-state system involving only the external waveguides. It requires a strong detuning between the outer and the middle waveguide and does not rely on the adiabatic transfer state (dark state) underlying the STIRAP process. The suggested technique is generalized to an array of N waveguides and verified by numerical beam propagation calculations.