Directly writing of 1-to-N optical waveguide power splitters in fused silica glass using a femtosecond laser

1-to-8 and 1-to-4 optical waveguide power splitters were fabricated using the focused 800 nm-amplified femtosecond laser to directly write a series of 1-to-2 Y-junction splitters in a fused silica glass sample. A shifted multi-scan technique was developed to substantially reduce the excessive insertion loss of the involved Y junctions and the polarization dependent loss of such integrated splitters. The obtained splitters were characterized in terms of their optical properties at the wavelength 1550 nm.