Study of the Leakage Loss in a Silica-on-Silicon Slab Waveguide

A simple and efficient method for studying the leakage loss in a conventional silica-on-silicon planar waveguide is presented. The magnitude of the leakage loss is obtained by calculating the complex propagation constant of the leaky waveguide structure. The dependence of the leakage loss on the thickness of the silica buffer layer (as well as the thickness of the silica upper-cladding layer) is investigated. Numerical results are presented and compared to those calculated with the beam propagation method.