BIREFRINGENCE OF PASSIVE MULTI-QUANTUM-WELL SEMICONDUCTOR SLAB WAVE-GUIDES

Effective refractive-indices of both TE and TM modes of passive semico nductor slab waveguides in the wavelength range near half the bandgap are measured and modeled, Comparisons among a bulk waveguide and sever al multiple-quantum-well (MQW) waveguides show that the;layered struct ures of a MQW tend to enhance the birefringence, Also, for a waveguide there exists a birefringence maximum at a wavelength that depends on the guiding layer thickness, Theoretical calculations with a model of anisotropic guiding layers for MQW waveguides show good agreement with the experimental results.