Patent ID: 6243200
Filing Date: 2001-06-05
Classification: G02B,H04J,Y10S

Abstract:
An optical wavelength router comprising:a beam displacer separating an input beam into a first beam and second beam having orthogonal polarizations;a split-mirror resonator having:(a) a front mirror with a partially-reflective first region and a second region having a higher reflectivity than said first region; and(b) at least one reflective back mirror spaced a predetermined distance from said front mirror; wherein said first beam is incident on said first region, and said second beam is incident on said second region of said front mirror, so that portions of said first and second beams are reflected by said front mirror and the remainders of said first and second beams are transmitted through said front mirror and are reflected by said at least one reflective back mirror through said front mirror so that a group delay of said first and second beams are dependent on wavelength;a birefringent element combining and interfering said first and second beams reflected from said split-mirror resonator to produce a beam having mixed polarization as a function of wavelength;a polarization-dependent routing element separating polarized components of said mixed-polarization beam to produce two output beams containing complementary subsets of the spectrum of the input beam.