Abstract
We provide for the first time the detailed study of the radiation performance of an optical
leaky wave antenna (OLWA) integrated into a Fabry–Pérot resonator. We show that the radiation
pattern can be expressed as the one generated by the interference of two leaky waves
counter-propagating in the resonator leading to a design procedure for achieving optimized
broadside radiation, i.e., normal to the waveguide axis. We thus report a realizable
implementation of the OLWA made of semiconductor and dielectric regions. The theoretical modeling
is supported by full-wave simulation results, which are found to be in good agreement. We aim to
control the radiation intensity in the broadside direction via excess carrier generation in the
semiconductor regions. We show that the presence of the resonator can provide an effective way of
enhancing the radiation level modulation, which reaches values as high as 13.5 dB, paving the way
for novel promising radiation control capabilities that might allow the generation of very fast
optical switches, as an example.
© 2014 IEEE
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