EXPERIMENTAL CONFIRMATION OF PHASE-RELATIONSHIPS OF MULTIMODE INTERFERENCE SPLITTERS USING A SHEARING-TYPE NEAR-FIELD SAGNAC INTERFEROMETER

We report, for the first time, the experimental confirmation of the ph ase relationships between the output images of 1 x 4 and 1 x 8 multimo de interference (MMI) splitters, Interference data is obtained using a shearing type near-field Sagnac interferometer, A Fourier transform t echnique is used to extract the phase information of the splitter outp ut images, Excellent agreement between the experimental results and th e theoretical predictions is obtained, which indicates good phase perf ormance of the device.