A heating electrode for lowering stress of a light waveguide and a VOA. The heating electrode is provided on an upper cladding layer (04) of a PLC waveguide. The heating electrode is formed by combining two or more sub-heating electrodes (13) arranged at intervals. Adjacent sub-heating electrodes (13) are connected by means of conductive electrodes (14) having a conductive function. By dividing a complete elongated heating electrode into a plurality of sub-heating electrodes (13), the stress exerted to a waveguide core layer is lowered without affecting the heating efficiency, and thus the reliability of optical indexes of a device is effectively improved.