Patent 7580597 was granted and assigned to Nippon Telegraph and Telephone on August, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The present invention provides an optical functional circuit where a holographic wave propagation medium is applied and a circuit property is excellent such as small transmission loss and crosstalk. The optical functional circuit where a plurality of circuit elements are formed on a substrate includes the wave propagation medium for converting an optical path of a leakage light so that the leakage light that is not emitted from a predetermined output port of the circuit element is not coupled to a different circuit element. This wave propagation medium is constituted by an optical waveguide that is provided with a clad layer formed on the substrate and a core embedded in the clad layer, and a part of the optical waveguide is formed in accordance with a refractive index distribution which is multiple scattered.