Optical power meter component

[Thomas Freir]

Hello Opti System team, I have been having an issue with a number of simulations. I have tracked it back to how a combiner and optical power meter operate. I have attached the layout. I have 2 CW Lasers, one of fixed wavelength 1490nm and the other being swept from 1480nm to 1500nm. The two lasers are put into a power combiner and the optical power measured at the output.

I have attached a graph of the optical power at the output of the power combiner with respect to wavelength. I would expect the output power to be the sum of the 2 input powers. However the optical power jumps when the two wavelengths are the same.

Can you explain this please. It is important I understand why this is happening before I continue with my simulations.

Thank you

* I have to upload the files on at a time for some reason

[Thomas Freir]

Result graph

[Thomas Freir]

Simulation

[Alessandro Festa]

Hi Thomas, I do not see any component in your layout!

[Thomas Freir]

Sorry

[Alessandro Festa]

Hi Thomas, if you look at page 1917 of the component library document, you will find the formula of the 2×1 power combiner: it is a sum of electric fields (and not power levels). This means that the output depends on the relative phase between signals..for example if you change the “Initial Phase” parameters on first laser, the power meter measurement changes when the two wavelengths are equal!

[Thomas Freir]

Thanks for that, I presume you mean the power combiner on page 1293

[Alessandro Festa]

Yes if you look in the bottom-right of the page it actually says 1917 in the pdf I have

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