Thermo-optic Imbert-Fedorov effect in a prism-waveguide coupling system with silicon-on-insulator

In this paper, a prism-waveguide coupling system based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) is revisited. We find that thermo-optic Imbert-Fedorov (TOIF) effect displays in this four-layer optical system which has not been proposed before. Furthermore, we discuss the TOIF shifts in prism/SiO2/Si/SiO2 and prism/Au/Si/SiO2 waveguides with different parameters and study the observed phenomena from physical point of view. It is shown that the maximum IF shift can achieve 140 μm in a prism/Au/Si/SiO2 waveguide which is large enough to be directly measured by the calculation results. Accordingly, TOIF shift provides a temperature control method for the enhancement and modulation of IF shift.