Adiabaticity engineering in optical waveguides

The fast quasi-adiabatic dynamics (FAQUAD) protocol has proven to be an effective approach to provide shortcuts to adiabatic light evolution in optical waveguides, resulting in short and robust devices. However, the FAQUAD approach of homogeneously distributing device adiabaticity only works for a single mode (polarization, wavelength, or spatial mode group) system. We propose an adiabaticity engineering approach to redistribute the adiabaticity of optical waveguides in multi-mode systems. By engineering the adiabaticity distribution using a single control parameter, we obtain shortcuts to adiabaticity in optical waveguides for multi-mode systems. The concept is applied to the design of a compact polarization-independent adiabatic 3-dB coupler on silicon.